Samba: allow insecure wide links

allow insecure wide links:

In normal operation the option wide links which allows the server to follow symlinks outside of a share path is automatically disabled when unix extensions are enabled on a Samba server. This is done for security purposes to prevent UNIX clients creating symlinks to areas of the server file system that the administrator does not wish to export.

Setting allow insecure wide links to true disables the link between these two parameters, removing this protection and allowing a site to configure the server to follow symlinks (by setting wide links to "true") even when unix extensions is turned on.

According to manual setting allow insecure wide links = yes should be enough to allow symlinks outside the shared path however it's not working for me unless I set unix extensions = no.

testparm is not even showing this variable?!

# testparm -s
Load smb config files from /etc/samba/smb.conf
rlimit_max: increasing rlimit_max (1024) to minimum Windows limit (16384)
Processing section "[Public]"
Loaded services file OK.
Server role: ROLE_STANDALONE
[global]
    workgroup = test
    server string = SambaBox
    syslog = 0
    log file = /var/log/samba/smb.log
    max log size = 50
    smb ports = 139
    socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=65536 SO_SNDBUF=65536
    load printers = No
    printcap name = /dev/null
    disable spoolss = Yes
    show add printer wizard = No
    idmap config * : backend = tdb

[Public]
    comment = Public
    path = /data/Public
    valid users = smbguest
    create mask = 0644
    force create mode = 0644
    force directory mode = 0755
    map archive = No
    wide links = Yes

Solution 1:

If you enabled wide link support but it does not work, SELINUX is probably blocking you.

Try to issue setenforce 0 and to retest your configuration. If it works, then you found your problem's source.

If this does not work, in [global] section add:

  • wide links = yes
  • allow insecure wide links = yes
  • unix extensions = no

Than restart samba and re-try your test case.