>>>>> "Adam" == Adam Warner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Adam> BTW Samba does seamlessly follow remote symlinks. I'm using
Adam> the technique right now to access media that is mounted over
Adam> a number of remote partitions through a single mount
Adam> point. But I cannot get the underlying file permissions
Adam> through Samba (which requires further Samba development to
Adam> map Unix --> NT --> Unix permissions).
This is a important different between NFS and SMB operations.
The SMB protocol was designed around windows. Windows doesn't support
things like symlinks, sockets, named pipes, etc, like Unix does in the
file system. So SMB simply translates (depending on configuration) an
open("file") call on the client to the same open("file") call on the
client (at least thats the way I think about it). This open call will
follow symlinks, communicate via name pipes to programs on the server,
etc.
This is completely different to NFS. With NFS all special file
operations (including access control, symlinks, named pipes) are done
on the client, not the server. Only very low level operations are done
on the server (so the server can remain stateless). For instance, a
named pipe will not talk to a program on the server, at best it will
only talk to another program on the client.
Of course, NFS does have major a major weakness because of this
approach: Access control done on the client computer isn't a very good
idea security wise...
--
Brian May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
