Right now I'm using a few symlinks to regular files with relative paths on the NTFS drive. I'll find a Win 7 box to test if they work there. I think symlinks can't be created on Windows Vista, 7, 8, without Admin permissions, but can't they be followed? Mike On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, Andrew Berg wrote: > On 2015.02.11 08:03, Andrew Lunn wrote: >>> If I make a symlink on the NTFS drive using Linux, will that symlink >>> work when I attach the NTFS drive to a Windows 7 machine? Do any of >>> you know the answer? >> >> Sorry, no idea. >> >> One thing to remember here is, its not linux, cygwin, or windows which >> is the key factor. It is NTFS. The file system needs to have the >> concept of a symbolic link. The version of NTFS used in XP does not >> have the concept. The .lnk files is a hack around the missing concept. >> It seems like NTFS used in vista does have the concept. Hence it might >> be possible to create them on the file system. > > Actually, Linux, Cygwin, and Windows will all handle symlinks on NTFS > differently, unfortunately. It's been a while since I've used it, so I > could be a bit off, but AFAIK, NTFS implementations outside of Windows > are not very good and implement some of the more advanced features a bit > hackishly. If that doesn't put you off the idea, consider that even > native support on Windows for symlinks in NTFS is not very good: error > codes are very wrong (try playing with the feature in Python or C or > something and you'll get incorrect error codes returned by the OS when > you try to do things like create a symlink where a file already exists), > and the ability to use the feature at all in Windows requires a special > privilege which is not given to standard user accounts (though it can be > specifically and explicitly granted). And, to top it off, Cygwin did > weird things when I had it use native symlinks instead of its own fake > symlinks. > > My advice is to stay far, far away from symlinks on NTFS. > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >