Samba Linux shares -- Why won't windows machines display/follow symbolic links?

Question

I set up a generally working samba server on a Linux machine like this:

useradd -g users netshareuser

passwd netshareuser

smbpasswd -a netshareuser

(passwords are the same)

mkdir /net/share

chown -R root:users /net/share

chmod -R g+rwxs /net/share

setfacl -R -m default:user::rwx,default:group::rwx,default:mask::rwx,default:other::--- /net/share

/etc/samba/smb.conf:

    [global]
    workgroup = workgroup
    server string = server
    security = user
    hosts allow = 192.168. 127.
    load printers = no
    log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log
    max log size = 50
    dns proxy = no
    printing = bsd
    printcap name = /dev/null
    disable spoolss = yes

    unix extensions = no
    follow symlinks = yes
    wide links = yes

    [share]
    comment = Directory containing shared files
    path = /net/share
    valid users = netshareuser
    read only = yes

rc.d restart samba

From a Windows (7) machine, "netshareuser" can access this share, read files and directories. However, If I create a symlink ln -s /some/directory/ /net/share/nameOfSymlink, the same Windows machine would not even display it.

Questions:

1. What do I have to do, to get Linux symlinks in that share to work on windows machines and is that even possible? UPDATE: This question has been answered by ultrasawblade! The problem were wrong permissions on /some/directory

2. Is there some way of sharing files with samba, that does not require to change file permissions? I mean a way, where you can share any file on your linux system to anyone on your network but without changing this file's permissions. What I want is: Tag a file as shared to "netshareuser", without changing the permissions of that file.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

Looks like you have the wide links setting to yes, which is what got me recently.

It's probably due to the permissions on /some/directory, following your example above.

If you don't want to change the file permissions, then you need to tell Samba to use a different local user for that share. That's really your only two options.

I think the force user and force group options is what you want. You will not have an optimum security situation if you force user to root, but it may be what you are looking for.