On Fri, Feb 3, 2023 at 11:04 AM Roger Oberholtzer <roger.oberholtzer@gmail.com> wrote:

If I create a link on a Windows NTFS disk (on Windows via mklink /d), that link shows up correctly on Linux when the disk is mounted via CIFS. For example:

l--------- 1 rst root 0 Feb 2 10:41 ProgramFiles -> Program Files

I can follow the link as expected. That's nice. However, if try to create a sym link on Linux (ln -s) on that CIFS volume, I get:

ln: failed to create symbolic link 'qq': Operation not supported

Is it truly not supported?

Yes, creation of Windows symlink is not supported. Kernel supports either Unix extensions or MF symlnks (which are special files parsed by client. You need to use the mfsymlinks option to enable them). smbclient may be able to create native Windows symlinks, but it requires administrative privileges on Windows, so if you are connected as a "normal" user it will likely fail as well.

Or is it some option I need to learn about that enables this?

I have not checked how a Linux disk mounted in Windows acts in this respect. That's a later exploration.

To my best knowledge SAMBA does not support reparse points so MF symlinks is really the only option.