On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 3:16 PM, everett hubble <everetthubble@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > With no Windows involved, can I use SMB3 between two Linux hosts > and have symlinks work seamlessly-- in other words I when I > create and read symlinks on the CIFS client side it has the same > effect as if I did the same thing on the server? > > If so, which versions of kernel and Samba and cifs-utils do I need? symlinks can be emulated on the client side in SMB3 (e.g. using mount option "mfsylinks") but Samba server does not recognize any of the four symlink formats as symlinks on the server ("mfsymlinks" ie apple style symlinks, "sfu" service for unix style symlinks, Windows junctions, or Windows "NFS-symlinks") although mfsymlinks and sfu style symlinks should work (the other two would require support in Samba for "reparse points"). To allow cifs.ko to create symlinks on the Linux server (remotely created by the client on the server) requires posix extensions (which are only available for cifs). Some view it as a bad idea (a security nightmare) to have the server OS recognize and follow symlinks that a network client creates, so it may not be a bad thing that SMB3 symlink emulation ("mfsymlinks") are not recognized on the server side and are only evaluated on the client (Apple or Linux client). -- Thanks, Steve -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-cifs" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html