[plug] NFS and remote files systems

[Mike Holland]

Ryan wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm trying to do some backups with a Solaris server.
> 
> Unfortunately, mounting SMBFS shares on Solaris is messy if not
> impossible.

This implies you need to backup from a windows file-server ???

> NFS works fine however, so I though I'll mount a bunch of SMBFS shares
> on another Linux box and export the parent directory via NFS.

Unfortunately you cannot do that. Not easily anyway.
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=nfs+export+samba+mount

First hit has this problem:
http://mperedim.serverhive.com/weblog/2005/08/06/export-sbmmount-through-nfs/

He solved it with a usermode NFS server, rather than using teh kernel.

> Problem is NFS follows symlinks locally and won't cross mount points by
> design, so is there a way one can get around this?

Thats not the problem.

Anyway, its usually a bad idea to try doing backups of a network
filesystem. You should run a backup program locally on the machines
where the files reside. And then maybe use SMB or NFS to write the
archive to another host, but there are more reliable and efficient ways.