Tracker item #3527672, was opened at 2012-05-17 12:32
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by johnpeterson
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Category: None
Group: None
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: John Peterson (johnpeterson)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: Symlink in Linux guest

Initial Comment:
Which guests support symlinks in a Windows 7 VMware Workstation host NTFS share?

This artifact 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2531303&group_id=204462&atid=989708
 seems to say that Gentoo guests support "ln -s".

In Ubuntu the operation
cd /mnt/hgfs/shared; touch foo; ln -snf foo fum
return
ln: failed to create symbolic link `fum': Permission denied
and if
sharedFolder0.followSymlinks = "FALSE" (in .vmx)
it returns
ln: failed to create symbolic link `fum': Operation not supported

# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS \n \l
# sudo dpkg -s open-vm-tools
Version: 2011.12.20-562307-0ubuntu1
VMware Workstation 8.0.2 build-591240

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>Comment By: John Peterson (johnpeterson)
Date: 2012-05-23 13:38

Message:
I've tried the Windows NFS servers and can give some comments about using
them to build projects over. My test have been to checkout and build vlc
and firefox from Debian/Ubuntu nfs-common.

Microsoft Server for NFS (3.5, 2003-11-08)

Not tested

I've not figured out how to run it in Windows 7 x64. nfssvc.exe and
pcnfsd.exe exit silently shortly after they are run. It could be because of
a simple missing file or registry setting or a more complex reason such as
incompatibility with a system file that can't be replaced. (It's not
possible to run the installer (SFU35SEL_EN.exe) in Windows 7 x64 and I've
not thoroughly examined all files and settings it writes to make sure it's
not a case of a missing file or setting.)

Cygwin nfs-server (2.5, 2006-10-17)

vlc make fails because the symlink support fails for 'tar x'. (For example
tar xvjfk vlc-contrib-i686-w64-mingw32-latest.tar.bz2 fails with the
message "tar: [i686-w64-mingw32/lib/libdts.a]: Cannot utime: No such file
or directory".)

Another problem is that hard (junction) and symbolic folder links on the
server are presented as symlinks to the client, which of course don't have
the paths pointed to. I prefer to share one folder on the NFS server and
link folders from that share, it's a significant burden to not have this
feature available.

haneWIN NFS Server (1.2.3, 2012-04-23)

vlc make fails because sed fails. It can only make projects who's makefile
don't use sed.

sed with the current Debian/Ubuntu nfs-common write its temporary file with
chmod 000, the server honors that and sed can't deleted its temporary file
and returns a nonzero ${?} so that make ends. The server author Herbert
Hanewinkel says that this is an issue with nfs-common and it might not be
fixed in the server.

Allegro NFS Server (repo and patches, 2012-05-22)

vlc and firefox (and perhaps many other projects) can be build over it.

In the current repo vlc make fails because nfsd-rename is too sensitive to
ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED and because it reads and writes an incorrect mtime so
that the autoconf mtime comparison between Makefile and config.status fail
and run config.status in an endless loop. But fixed have been posted on the
repo site https://github.com/franzinc/nfs/issues.

So NFS is a viable workaround but vmhgfs support for symlinks would be
superior. It could also emulate file locks like Allegro NFS Server does for
increased compatibility in case they are used, however autoconf that
normally lock files will honor an NFS share mounted with -onolock and don't
attempt to lock files.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment By: Steve (lousybrit)
Date: 2012-05-23 11:12

Message:
Thanks I will try that out. I know Windows have their own services for Unix
which I have briefly tried in the past but not recently. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment By: John Peterson (johnpeterson)
Date: 2012-05-22 00:22

Message:
As a workaround I'm using NFS to access the Windows host. (Allegro is the
best Windows NFS server as it supports symlinks and locks and is open
source.)

It's important for me to be able to store all data on the host since my
files are better organized that way.

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Comment By: Steve (lousybrit)
Date: 2012-05-17 17:46

Message:
It requires new code to be implemented in the vmware-vmx for the HGFS
server side in the Windows platform specific code.

Steve

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment By: John Peterson (johnpeterson)
Date: 2012-05-17 17:34

Message:
Can it be patched in modules/linux/vmhgfs/inode.c:Hgfs*Symlink* or does it
also require a patch for vmware-vmx.exe?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment By: Steve (lousybrit)
Date: 2012-05-17 17:12

Message:
Hi John,

Currently for Windows hosts symlinks are not supported. We currently don't
have plans to add it either.

Only supported on Linux/OS X hosts.

Sorry.
Steve

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment By: John Peterson (johnpeterson)
Date: 2012-05-17 12:35

Message:
The share is mounted with
mount -t vmhgfs .host:/ /mnt/hgfs

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=989708&aid=3527672&group_id=204462

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