Re: NFS trys following remote symlinks as if local!

[Dave Sherohman <esper@sherohman.org>]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2001 at 01:31:21PM +1300, Adam Warner wrote:
> I can mount the remote filesystem on my client machine no problem. But
> if I try to change to a remote symlinked directory I get, for example:
> 
> bash: cd: backup2: No such file or directory
> 
> Because that directory doesn't exist on my _local_ machine.

Uh...  That's the way symlinks are supposed to work.  This is even a
Good Thing since it allows you to use them to make it look like local
machine-specific data is inside an NFS-mounted directory.  (For
instance, when NFS-mounting /home, I'll usually symlink ~/.netscape
to a local directory to prevent netscape from needlessly sending its
cached files over the network.)

It's also good for security, since there's no guarantee that the
link's destination (on the NFS server) is in an exported directory.
If someone were to (from the local machine) create a symlink to, say,
/etc/passwd, then they could grab the server's password file even if
/etc/wasn't exported.

Finally, the way you expect it to work would be more confusing, since
two symlinks that _claim_ to point to the same file could be pointing
to two completely different files if one was in a local directory and
the other was in an NFS-mounted directory.  Not fun to try and keep
track of.

-- 
When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists
have already won. - reverius

Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Mr. Slippery