How to make symlinks accessible through NFS

[kozumo]

I have a symlink on a directory that's shared through NFS and I can't access, it doesn't see it as a symlink. Does anyone know what I need to do to be able to access it?

Thanx ;)

[freebsd]

>> Does anyone know what I need to do to be able to access it?

You can't and that's what NFS is. If you want to mount a NFS share, just use absolute path, not symlink.
e.g.

mount -t nfs nfs-server:/the/absolute/exported/path /nfsclient/absolute/path/no/symlink

[kozumo]

Thanks freebsd. I have another question that is semi-related.

On my NFS share, newer files cannot be accessed by the client computer, because of the permissions that are set. Meaning that I need to ssh to the server computer and change the permissions each time there are newer files so that the client computer may use them.

I asked this question a couple weeks ago, but unfortunately nobody knew, but some told me to look into "fmask" which I had no luck in finding in manuals and I also asked a few people on IRC, but no luck.

Do you know what I can do to just let the client computer use the files on the NFS share without having to change the permissions each time? Either make it so that everytime there are newer files, the permissions are 755 (or whatever I specify it to be) or maybe allow a user to do whatever they want with the files?

Thanks again ;)

[freebsd]

Check out my little NFS tutorial I posted recently at -> http://bsdvault.net/viewtopic.php?topic=266&forum=2

Look at (3) specifically. There are 14 steps. The following steps apply to Linux as well: 2,3,4,7,8,9,10,11,12

[kozumo]

I don't have an rc.conf in my /etc/ directory. I'm using Debian. Also the /etc/exports format seems to be different from mine. What does -maproot do?

[freebsd]

>> What does -maproot do?

It's equivalent to no_root_squash in Linux.

>> Also the /etc/exports format seems to be different from mine

Yes, so check this out -> ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/NFS-HOWTO
(3.2.1).