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Symbolic links typically exist on Unix/Linux-type file systems. When viewed from Windows (typically via a SMB/Samba/CFS service), the links appear as normal directories. Imagine the following contrived example:
When a Windows-based directory scanner sees this, it will think /users/steve/bin is a separate and distinct directory from /usr/bin.
Further, consider the loop that this link would make
/usr/bin/network/test/bin -> /usr/binWhen symbolic links point back up into their own path they create a cycle. A Windows-based directory scanner would see:
\\<machine>\<share>\user\bin\network\test\bin\network\test\bin\network\test\bin... and so on...Power Admin has come up with some advanced symbolic link detection algorithms that can be deployed on Windows. The algorithm isn't perfect, but it's close. Enabling symbolic link detection will have the following side-effects:
Is it safe to enable symbolic link detection on a Windows-only volume? Yes, but the caveats above still apply (mostly scans are just slower) , so there is no real reason to do it.
Is it required to enable symbolic link detection when scanning a volume hosted on a Unix/Linux server? Yes, otherwise the data will likely be incorrect and the scan process could very possibly scan forever and never finish.
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