[Samba] Status of SMB3 POSIX symlinks

[Dorian Taylor (Lists)]

> On Jan 25, 2021, at 4:54 AM, Aurélien Aptel via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
> 
> Yes the SMB 3.1.1 POSIX extensions code in Samba server is experimental,
> you need to build it yourself. There are other on going work on the
> server side which are taking priorities.

Aha. I was wondering because I poked at some of the release notes and went and looked on the roadmap and didn’t see it there.

> That being said, you can already use symlinks with any SMB servers by
> using the 'mfsymlinks' mount option. It fakes symlinks by storing them
> as regular file on the server but returns them as symlinks on the client
> side. If you only care that symlinks are symlinks on the client then
> this is enough.

This I did find, though. It wasn’t clear at the outset that there were two distinct symlink implementations (arguably two distinct conceptual entities and concomitant objectives).

> If you need absolute links to work on the server (making them point
> to absolute path on the server), then this will never be possible.

I am indeed only after symlinks that work within the share, but as somebody who works almost exclusively on POSIX platforms, I know that the lack of proper symlinks is going to mess me up. I am currently using OpenAFS but it is slow, uses weaker encryption, needs additional client software (including compiling kernel modules which makes APT upgrades take forever) and requires its own special partitions instead of exporting a native one. I was hoping to shed it for something more mainstream, but alas, symlinks.

Thanks for apprising me; I’ll keep on the lookout for changes.

--
Dorian Taylor
Make things. Make sense.
https://doriantaylor.com

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