Asus wrt Merlin samba symlinks support

[zany130]

I'm trying to host my USB connected to my Asus router on my network.

The disk is formated ext4 and has some unix symlinks that point to various places within the share for easy access.

Both my windows laptop and my Linux desktop running bazzite (fedora atomic) are unable to see these symlinks though.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Works for me without any changes to the router.

Are your symbolic links using relative or absolute paths?

When you say your Windows laptop can't "see" these links do you mean that literally, i.e. they don't appear in Windows File Explorer? Or do you mean that when you click on them you get an error?

 

[Jeffrey Young]

Works for me as well. Tested a symbolic link to another directory in the same share. A symbolic link to a directory outside of the specific share does not show up. Is this perhaps what you are trying to do? If so, maybe look at this

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5120/how-do-you-make-samba-follow-symlink-outside-the-shared-path

I have not tested.

 

[ColinTaylor]

A symbolic link to a directory outside of the specific share does not show up. Is this perhaps what you are trying to do?

Well he did specifically say "symlinks that point to various places within the share" so I'm assuming not. That said, I did test a symbolic link that pointed outside the share and that also showed up. It just gave an error when trying to access it (because wide links = no. So I don't understand why you're not seeing the link.

 

[Jeffrey Young]

Doing anything with Windows makes my head hurt. Idk, I did not try to reslove the issue. The symbolic link showed ok and worked ok when the target was within the share. I believe that was the OP situation as well, just trying to cover the basis.

 

[zany130]

Yes my Windows laptop does not show any of the links and so does my linux desktop PC the links are just missing on both OS

No I'm not trying to point outside the share. I'm trying to point to a folder within the share that is several folders deep for easy access


the symlinks show up and work correctly if I plug in the USB directly into my linux PC but when shared over the network using smb it does not on any OS

 

[ColinTaylor]

Strange. My first guess would be some sort of permissions issue, especially if the files/directories were originally created on another machine.

Try:
chmod -R 777 /tmp/mnt/diskname/sharename

 

[degrub]

same SMB version ?

 

[zany130]

Strange. My first guess would be some sort of permissions issue, especially if the files/directories were originally created on another machine.

Try:
chmod -R 777 /tmp/mnt/diskname/sharename

tried running that on my router and no difference windows AND linux still cant see the symlinks. Do I need to restart the router or something first?

 

[zany130]

same SMB version ?

yup everything using smb2


EDIT: huh it does seem to be some permission issue . just tried creating a test symlink in a ssh session on the router and that does show up on my linux PC windows also

 

[ColinTaylor]

Do I need to restart the router or something first?

No. I'm at a loss what to suggest as I can't recreate your problem. Have you made any changes to the router that might effect Samba in some way?

 

[zany130]

No. I'm at a loss what to suggest as I can't recreate your problem. Have you made any changes to the router that might effect Samba in some way?

no i did try manually allowing symlinks with a smb.conf.add but I deleted it. it seems the problem was a permission issue though as if I create the link on my router it works fine