Creating symlinks on a CIFS share?

MasterC · 08-30-2007, 03:14 PM

Hello,

Is it possible to create symlinks on a cifs share? Specifically, a file on the cifs share, symlinked to the cifs share. Like so:

Code:

ln -s /mnt/cifs-1/ubuntu-7.04.iso /mnt/cifs-1/ubuntu-latest.iso

If it is possible, are there any special things I should be doing? I'm basically just mounting the volume via cifs in fstab and trying to create a mirror. Here's my line in fstab:

Code:

//fileserver.example.com/Mirror /var/mirror             cifs username=windows_admin_account,password=password,uid=0,gid=0,dir_mode=0775,file_mode=0644,rw      0 0

fileserver.example.com and the username/password are changed for the example

From there, if I go to /var/mirror and touch a file (or create one, copy one, whatever) and then try to symlink to it:
touch test.file
ln -s test.file test.cooler.file

I get this error:

Code:

ln -s test.file test.cooler.file
ln: creating symbolic link `test.cooler.file': Operation not supported

Any thoughts, ideas, obvious pointers, links, or other useful input?

Thanks!

-Chad

acid_kewpie · 08-30-2007, 04:26 PM

oh hey chad.... no, as symlinks are purely nodes in the inode tree, and not actual disk space it's an intrinsic part of the filesystem itself, and that's only in POSIX filesystems, which SMB isn't - there's just nowhere for the data to go, just like it is for unix file permissions. i remember seeing that NTFS oddly *does* support symlinks, but that's obviously not going to help when smb / cifs is in between.

right... who's gonna prove me wrong this time?

MasterC · 08-30-2007, 04:34 PM

Thanks for the response! I guess I'll either have to move forward to migration towards a Linux fileserver, or just wait it out and see how the mirror goes in the meantime. The immediate need isn't anything important, I'm just setting up a local Gentoo mirror so I can emerge faster on the other servers and my desktop. I suppose if something important came up, I could either figure out how to do it in windows or, well, move up the time table!

Thanks again Chris,

-Chad