[Techtalk] symlinks

[Melissa Meyer]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 03:26:36PM -0700, Cynthia Kiser wrote:
> > Also, if anyone know what this really means:
> > 
> > Don't use unix symlinks. Just don't. With a symlink a file/directory 
> > "exists" twice, something AFP doesn't allow. There's currently no way 
> > this can be resolved, as we either end up with two file/dirs having the 
> > same id, or a file having two parents. If you still insist on using 
> > them, be aware you're heavily  violating the specs. You have been warned...
> > 
> > So, will the symlinks just be ignored, or will it cause problems with 
> > the symlinks when used on the linux machine? It seems a weird, 
> > threatening paragraph, and I'm not sure there is really much affect, 
> > other than it just doesn't work when the volume is mounted.
> 
> I don't know what the failure mode would be. From my 30 seconds of
> google-acquired knowledge about netatalk, I would say that old Mac's
> didn't have symlinks, so the appletalk protocol doesn't specify how
> they would be treated. What are you using netatalk to do and that
> might help folks guess what might be problematic.
> 

Symlinks do work with the new netatalk.  I don't exactly remember the
issue with the statement above.  It may have something to do with how
hfs+ handles files and aliases.