SMB Wide Symlinks disabled again in OSX 10.7 Lion

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SMB Wide Symlinks disabled again in OSX 10.7 Lion

Hey Everyone. I'm hoping all you fellow Linux / Apple experts out there can help me to make an adjustment that I would assume is minor, but has a big impact in my home network. Sometime around the release of 10.6.5 Apple decided to turn off wide symlinks for SMB shares as it was a security threat. Well after digging around I found that you can manually change these settings by editing the /etc/smb.conf file. Worked great. I have a home network server off my Mac that everything from my Windows 7 PC machine to my android phone connects to to access the shares off my mac through SMB. Problem is all these shares are setup with symlinks.

When OSX 10.7 was released, I've read that Apple ditched the open source samba and has their own setup now for SMB and AFP. This is all fine and dandy, but once again wide symlinks is disabled (Folders / Files show as 0kb instead of an actual file / folder) and I can't access any of the folders/files off my SMB shares anymore as they are all setup as symlinks. This has been beyond annoying. I've checked the smb.conf file in both /etc and /var/db/ to make sure:

follow symlinks = yes

wide links = yes

unix extensions = no

wide symlinks = yes

to make sure wide symlinks work on my SMB shares as before with NO LUCK. My guess is with the new Apple made SMB setup they are storing the settings for wide symlinks in a different location. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN MAKE THIS SIMPLE ADJUSTMENT in OS X 10.7 Lion???

Thank you.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 31, 2011 11:01 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 4, 2011 8:45 AM in response to Poi§on

You can set those two flags with this one liner:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist ProgramArguments -array-add -string "--no-symlinks" -string "false"

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Answer 2

piii666

Level 1

18 points

Aug 1, 2011 1:55 PM in response to Poi§on

Hi All,

Anyone? I have the same issue, no luck editing /etc/smb.conf - is it even used in 10.7 at all?

TIA

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Answer 3

HAICKEL

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Aug 1, 2011 10:07 PM in response to Poi§on

No Luck here too, still looking for help

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Answer 4

Aug 3, 2011 4:04 PM in response to Poi§on

I was able to get symlinks working on a 10.7 system by editing the file located at /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist - locate the "ProgramArguments" array (notice that it's calling /usr/sbin/smbd), and add two strings: "--no-symlinks" and "false" - it should look like this:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>

<array>

<string>--no-symlinks</string>

<string>false</string>

</array>

I found this command line option by performing the following terminal command:

/usr/sbin/smbd -help

After modifying this launchd plist, you will need to toggle filesharing off/on for this to take effect.

From what I found, it was not necessary to include any of the "wide links", "unix extensions", "wide symlinks", or "follow symlinks" options in any configuration files.

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Answer 5

Poi§on Author

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Aug 4, 2011 8:04 AM in response to Edward Kelley

Eddie you rock. Thanks so much. I owe you...more beer now. For real!

To everyone else: make sure you edit this in nano as root or some other text editor within terminal so that the permissions get preserved.

sudo nano /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist

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Answer 6

piii666

Level 1

18 points

Aug 4, 2011 10:08 AM in response to Edward Kelley

Thanks folks, works as a charm!

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Answer 7

piii666

Level 1

18 points

Aug 29, 2011 12:46 PM in response to piii666

It does not work as a charm as I thought on the beginning.

My problem is that I have a folder, that is shared. It has lots of symlinks to other areas of my macbook, most of them work perfectly (after adding a flag as suggested previously).

But, I have some symlinks pointing at mounted external drives (ln -s /Volumes/myUSB myUSB) ... and when I try to go there, Windows XP says: "myUSB is not available. Incorrect parameter". I went to to cmd line and issued 'dir', and it appears that myUSB is of "Junction" type - I dunno, whether it is the issue or not. Some 'Junction' type folders work ok, some, like those pointing at USB don't.

File/folder permissions are ok, the symlink stright to /Volums works, I can even traverse to Macintosh HD (/). The only problem is with those mounted USB drives. Any idea?

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Answer 8

Aug 29, 2011 2:22 PM in response to piii666

What is the volume format on the external USB drive? Is it formatted as HFS Extended (Journaled)? You can check the volume formatting by performing a "Get Info" on the external USB drive - look at the "Format" option under "General".

Maybe it's necessary to reformat that drive as an HFS+ volume before it can be shared with symlinks?

Alternately, is the option to "Ignore ownership on this volume" checked when you "Get Info" on the drive? It might help to check that box at the bottom of the Get Info window.

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Answer 9

piii666

Level 1

18 points

Aug 29, 2011 2:28 PM in response to Edward Kelley

The drives have FAT32 partitions (no ownership enforced). The other drive, formatted as HFS+ works good. Only those FAT32 have problems. I shouldn't say that previously in Snow Leopard they worked.

The strange thing is that when I 'ls -la /Volumes' I see these drives having owner and group set to: _unknown. Maybe this confuses smbd?

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Answer 10

piii666

Level 1

18 points

Aug 29, 2011 3:28 PM in response to piii666

After reboot FAT32 drives mount with proper owner & group, but they still cannot be accessed via symlink.

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Answer 11

phobox

Level 1

0 points

Aug 29, 2011 5:11 PM in response to piii666

I have noticed in 10.7 that Apple's new Samba implementation breaks sharing from drives that are not formatted with HFS+. For example I have a number of usb drives formatted as NTFS, working fine on Lion using Paragon NTFS. I cannot share the contents of these drives via smb in Lion, connecting to them from a client will fail. It should be noted that this worked perfectly in all previous versions of OSX I've tested (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard).

The only way to solve this issue was to install and manually configure the open source Samba3 from MacPorts. I have disabled Apple's Samba and am now running the open source version (Which was the one used in Snow Leopard and all previous OSX versions), which works fine with both NTFS formatted drives and symlinks. It also allows a lot more flexibility with options than Apple's version, though I warn you setting it up isnt for the faint of heart, it can require a fair amount manual configuration.

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Answer 12

Sep 12, 2011 6:25 AM in response to Poi§on

All,

I cannot even see /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist. Is there any other way to get to this file?

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Answer 13

piii666

Level 1

18 points

Sep 12, 2011 11:25 AM in response to Abou Jalloh

Abou, what do you mean you cannot see this file? There's none or may you don't have access rights (you have to be root to read/write it /for example using sudo command/).

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Answer 14

Sep 12, 2011 11:44 AM in response to piii666

Found it....It says I don't have access to it when I try to add those two lines when I am in TextEdit...I am the administrator of the laptop.

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Answer 15

piii666

Level 1

18 points

Sep 12, 2011 11:55 AM in response to Abou Jalloh

what does the following command say?

ls -la /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist

Does it have any access rights? It should have +r +w for root,

if not, then try:

sudo chown root /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist

sudo chmod +rw /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist

the use nano via sudo:

sudo nano /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist

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