Correct settings for wide symlinks on samba shares on OMV 8

I am trying to use symlinks in a SMB share on OMV 8.

What I did so far (not mentioning the steps to share SMB folder)

1. create a symlink to a folder outside the current SMB shared folder somewhere in the SMB share:

cd /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/
ln -s /var/www/html html
ls -la html
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root users 14 Jan 21 10:18 html -> /var/www/html/

2. in the OMV web interface, for the respective share I enabled both

Follow symlinks
Wide links

3. save and apply

4. access smb share from a PC (windows for example)

- here the symlinks are not even visible in the share

5. check /etc/samba/smb.conf and here I can find these:

in Global:

unix extensions = yes
allow insecure wide links = yes

in the respective share settings

follow symlinks = yes
wide links = yes

Then I manually changed only this in the Global section of /etc/samba/smb.conf

unix extensions = no

and manually restarted smbd service, and now, the symlink appeared in the share and I was able to access the contents.

unfortunately, after changing anything in the web interface of smb server, this is overridden to the initial value (yes) by OMV and after applying the changes, the symlink is no longer visible in SMB share.

how can I enable symlinks in SMB server?

Quote from ryecoaaron

Why are you sharing omv's html directory via samba? This is not a great idea. If you must use OMV's nginx instance, you should create another location in /etc/nginx/openmediavault-webgui.d//etc/nginx/openmediavault-webgui.d/

Let's not think about that specific folder, it was only as an example for testing purposes.

The files that I want to make available in the SMB share are files in several places from disks that are not shared at all and I do not want to share the entire disk or entire the folders on it, I only want to share specific files or directories that are in different parent locations and have them visible in the same samba share. I do not want to move / copy data to the SMB share.

I assumed that enabling

Quote

Follow symlinks

Wide links

should be enough, but it doesn't work without manually disabling "unix extensions" in smb.conf

I am not sure what else I need to enable in SMB server / shares to be able to see whatever I linked in the SMB share.

Quote from Adamaen

Hello,

Have you try to use the omv plugin symlinks?

not yet.

but the symlinks that I want to have visible in the SMB share are pointing to disks that are not shared at all.

I will give it a try.

Quote from ryecoaaron

Since you can create a shared folder to any path (literally any path if the sharerootfs plugin is installed), why not use shared folders and not use symlinks?

main problem is that the folders / files I am linking to are spread in a lot of places (disks, subfolders, etc).

my small kids will access those folders and I do not want to move them somewhere else because the data is replicated (for backup purposes) identically in 2 disks that are located outside of OMV (one of them is in another location). I also do not want them to have access where they do not really need, so this is the main reason I would like to have a shared folder for them and in that shared folder, to have symlinks to files and folders that they need and nothing else.

I have an UPDATE:

it seems that absolute path symlinks work correctly.

but when links point to something that is a relative path to symlink folder, it does not work.

I will mark this thread as resolved.