Re: With smb1 unix extensions gone, any way to export existing symlinks to Linux clients as symlinks?

On Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:34:58 +0200
"Dr. Thomas Orgis via samba" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> I recently toyed with samba as an option to handle exporting files to
> clients without root privileges on the server. Particularily, this is
> about mounting a certain FUSE fs in a user mount namespace and
> exporting that fs via smbd running in the same namespace, using an
> unprivileged port. This is a public read-only share for everyone using
> guest access, so no need for any user mapping.
> 
> I got that working, basically, but except for one issue: The FUSE fs
> contains symlinks that need to be re-exported as symlinks to the
> clients. The clients need to be able to readlink and explicitly work
> with the link targets instead of the SMB server following them.
> 
> Now this used to work with smb1 + unix extensions, IMHO … I got
> symlinks on the server, the smbd just passes them on (does _not_
> follow them, for security reasons, of course).
> 
> But this has been deprecated because somehow the spectre of clients
> possibly creating links that the server then follows and possibly
> exposes files outside the configured scope of the share was too scary
> and not deemed to be possible to handle safely, I presume.
> 
> The new style with SMB3 is emulated symlinks with special files on the
> server (mfsymlinks), right? Does this really mean that there is no way
> for me to export existing Unix symlinks with samba? Would I need
> another layer of FUSE to translate actual symlinks to the mfsymlinks
> files?
> 
> I guess I'll have to do it 'properly' and set up NFS-Ganesha (which
> even used to support FUSE directly, but has deprecated that option
> recently:-/) but had hoped for Samba being a relatively simple option
> for this world-read-only export.
> 
> Or is there some sane way to get read-only 'real' symlinks exported to
> clients with current samba?
> 
> 
> Alrighty then,
> 
> Thomas
> 

Samba is doing its best to emulate Windows and Windows uses reparse
points instead of symlinks, but there has been quite extensive
development carried out by Sernet on SMB3 Unix extensions, amongst
which are symlinks.

What version of Samba are you using, it might be that a newer version
may help.

Rowland

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