The cifs.symlinks.enable option, enabled by default, permits CIFS clients to follow symbolic links.
To enable CIFS access to symbolic links after they have been disabled, complete the following step:
There are special requirements to enable CIFS access to the following types of symbolic links:
Since the destination of an absolute symbolic link depends on the type of UNIX mount, CIFS clients need additional information to interpret absolute symbolic links.
By default, Data ONTAP does not allow a CIFS client to follow a symbolic link outside the share to which the CIFS client is authenticated.
The following section describes the options for setting up the way CIFS clients behave when they encounter relative and absolute symbolic links on the filer.
You can specify how you want CIFS clients to interact with symbolic links by doing one or more of the following:
Use the following table to help determine which options you want to implement. The table shows for each option the types of destinations that symbolic links will be able to point to.
For more information about each of these options, see the following sections:
You should prevent CIFS clients from following symbolic links that point to files because Data ONTAP can update the wrong files. The wrong files may be updated because many CIFS client applications perform operations such as writing to a temporary file, renaming the original file to a backup name, then renaming the temporary file to the original name.
When client applications perform these operations, if the original file was targeted directly by a symbolic link, that file would be stored in the directory where the symbolic link was, and the renamed symbolic link would point to the original file rather than to the updated file.
Note
CIFS clients following symbolic links to directories, rather than to individual files, do not experience this problem.
Copyright © 1994-2003, Network Appliance, Inc. All rights
reserved.
Part No. 210-00473
File: multi6.htm
Last updated: 11/25/03 18:03:02