[Pkg-samba-maint] Bug#866823: samba: does not follow symbolic links

[Michael Tokarev]

Control: tag -1 + confirmed upstream
Control: found -1 2:4.16.6+dfsg-6

Hi!

So, it looks like samba does not work with symbolic links anymore,
even after the VFS layer rewrite.

When there's a symlink within a share which has a directory component,
it is being ignored by samba completely, if it were listed in
veto files.

It is interesting that with 4.16, a symlink pointing to the same
directory but leaving it in the path, actually works:

   touch dest.txt -- this is the target

   ln -s dest.txt a.txt
   ln -s ./dest.txt b.txt
   ln -s ../thisdir/dest.txt c.txt

even the c.txt works, despite the fact that it leaves the
directory in question!

But any symlink which points to another (sub)directory is just
ignored:

   ln -s subdir/file file
   ln -s .. parentdir

and so on.  While the latter, with parentdir one, is obviously
right, the former is, in my opinion, entirely wrong and should
be allowed.  And this is what this bugreport is about.

/mjt