NFS mounting a directory of symbolic links to other directories

[bene-Gk2boCrsRs1AfugRpC6u6w at public.gmane.org (Ben Eisenbraun)]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:23:50PM -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> A hard link is an entry in an inode. If you have 2 directories that are on 
> the same file system (meaning the same partition in PC speak) they share 
> the same inode. But, if those same two directories are exported separately, 
> on a system that imports them, they will be different file systems. 
> Example:
> on the system where the directories reside:
> /foo/bar and /foo/fubar exists, and in your exports you export /foo/bar and 
> /foo/fubar.
>
> On your NFS client you mount host:/foo/bar on /foo/bar and host:/foo/fubar 
> on /foo/fubar. On the NFS client they will NOT be part of the same file 
> system.

That seems right, but it's not relevant to the discussion.  The NFS client
is just going to ask the NFS server for the file with inode X and the
server will look at its own file systems and return the file.

In Don's case, he can export /base/kidsmusic with hard links to files 
that were initially outside of that directory and the NFS server will 
return those files.   He doesn't need to export /base/music, the directory 
he originally hard linked the files from, since a hard linked file _is 
the same file_ from the file systems point of view.  The file system
doesn't even know which name was the "original" file name.

I think Derek's follow up explains this more clearly than my original post
does.

-ben

--
human history becomes more and more a race between education and 
catastrophe.                                        <h.g. wells>