Automatically Add to iTunes

[bmokrzyc]

Hi all,

Just received my new ReadyNAS Pro. I'm pretty psyched about it. I've just about got everything set up the way I want it except for one small issue.

I have two AFP shares, one named "cloud" that all users have r/w permissions to, and another name "iTunes" which is read only, except for one user which can r/w. Basically I want to protect my iTunes library from having a random user accidentally delete something by limiting write access to one user. Here's my issue though, I want all users to be able to add content to it without needing write access to the "iTunes" share.

So my solution to this was to create a symlink in "cloud" to the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder within my "iTunes" share. I did this by enabling root SSH access and issuing the appropriate 'ln -s' command. I see the link show up under the "cloud" share as I expected. However, actually clicking on the symlink doesn't work. Actually it just disappears. I really don't want every user to have write access to "iTunes." Is there a clean way to do this?

-Brian

[bmokrzyc]

Still searching, but I found this...

From http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/2.0/htmldocs/configuration.html

"Don't use unix symlinks. Just don't. With a symlink a file/directory "exists" twice, something AFP doesn't allow. There's currently no way this can be resolved, as we either end up with two file/dirs having the same id, or a file having two parents. If you still insist on using them, be aware you're heavily violating the specs. You have been warned..."

-Brian

[bmokrzyc]

Hi all,

Well after diving into this deeper than I wanted to.. it turns out that it's not possible. The symlink I was trying to implement would have to have been a server-side resolved symlink. AFP just doesn't work this way, all alias/symlinks are resolved on the client-side.

Apparently this behavior is the same on a CIFS share. Only if you disable UNIX-extensions does a symlink/alias resolve on the client side. And this is sort of a security issue on top of it all.

In the end, I'm going to restructure my directories and just use good ole UNIX permission settings to achieve the desired effect. Not as clean as I'd like, but at least this way it's possible.

-Brian