Symbolic links created by Linux are not displayed in File Explorer

Question

I created some symbolic links to folders on my NAS with the Linux ln -s command, but Windows' File Explorer doesn't show them.

I was originally using Windows 10 Education, and the symbolic links were viewable in File Explorer. However, after I reinstall my system as Windows 10 Pro, they stopped showing up. I tried to recreate these links using ln -sfn command on the NAS and the File Explorer temporarily showed them again, but after a few hours (I have not found the exact trigger condition yet) they stopped showing up again.

The file system of my NAS is Btrfs, and the storage space is mounted as a network location in Windows using the Map Network Drive feature in File Explorer.

Answer 1

Hello,

based upon the information provided.

Windows uses SMB. Linux uses Samba to serve files to windows over SMB. Samba may be the issue.

To fix this problem you need to modify your SAMBA configuration.

Add / modify these three lines to enable SAMBA mapping to symlink paths.

follow symlinks = yes

wide links = yes

unix extensions = yes

allow insecure wide links = yes

Save the file and restart Samba service.

service smb restart

And see if it helps,

Thank you

--If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept as answer--

Answer 2

Thank you so much, been scratching my head since I migrated from Gentoo to Ubuntu, this worked a treat.