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Vista To Get Symlinks?

Posted by Zonk on from the sounds-like-another-os-i-know dept.

TheRealSlimShady writes "According to a post by Ward Ralston on the Windows server team's weblog, Vista server is to get symlinks as part of the SMB2 protocol." From the post: "In Vista/Longhorn server, the file system (NTFS) will start supporting a new filesystem object (examples of existing filesystem objects are files, folders etc.). This new object is a symbolic link. Think of a symbolic link as a pointer to another file system object (it can be a file, folder, shortcut or another symbolic link)."

2 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. Security risk? by fm2503 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From TFA:

    "Now why is this relevant to the SMB2 protocol? This is because, for symbolic links to behave correctly, they should be interpreted on the client side of a file sharing protocol (otherwise this can lead to security holes). "

    Is it not rather:

    "If the client does not interpret symbolic links then nothing will work?"

  2. FOUR, er FIVE symlink styles, all kinda *wrong* by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So there's going to be FOUR ways to alias files and folders and volumes:
    • (1) Mapping a directory to a drive letter.
    • (2) Shortcuts.
    • (3) NTFS mount drive as folder.
    • (4) The new symlink thingy.

    oops, isnt there still:

    • the old DOS "subst" command too?

    Make that FIVE ways. All of them looking somewhat alike, but all with subtly different syntax, semantics, overhead, and security implications. Sweet!