Cygwin symbolic links on a SAMBA server

[Mumit Khan <khan@xraylith.wisc.EDU>]

This is a message I had sent to the uwin mailing list regarding the
support of symbolic links on a SAMBA server. This applies to Cygwin
equally.

Mumit -- khan@xraylith.wisc.edu

ps: no, this is not an automatically forwarded from one mailing list to
the other by way of Japan ;-)

------- Forwarded Message

Date:    Mon, 22 Feb 1999 16:48:11 -0600
Subject: Re: ln and samba 


David Korn <dgk@research.att.com> writes:
> 
> I believe that this would require a change to samba.  When U/WIN
> creates a symlink on a FAT or samba file system, it does this by
> creating a file of a special format and gives the file the system
> attribute.  The samba server would have to detect this and
> create the link.

I was going to respond earlier, but then forgot all about it. A similar 
question asked by a Cygwin user just jogged my memory.

UWIN (and Cygwin) implements the symbolic links by adding a magic
cookie to the file and then setting the SYSTEM attribute (this is
possibly just for efficiency, at least in Cygwin). Samba servers
support this SYSTEM attribute by setting the group execute bit on a
file, so it does support the symbolic links already. Unfortunately, the
reason you don't see it is because it's turned OFF by default.

If you need to have symbolic support in the server (which I do since I
do a lot of the work on mounted disks), you can turn it on by the
following in the Samba configuration file and then restarting it:

   mask system = yes 
   create mask = 0775

the "create mask" can be anything as long as you *DON'T* mask out the
group execute bit (ie., 010), which is what Samba server uses to
support the SYSTEM attribute.

Please consult your SAMBA docs before doing anything. I don't know how
far back this support goes, but I remember it back in 1.9.x days.

------- End of Forwarded Message


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