I recently discovered an interesting “feature” of symbolic links in conjunction with NFS mounts: they don’t work!
For example, let’s say you have the following NFS export:
/media/files
Inside of that export, you have the following path:
/media/files/isos/osmedia/linux/ubuntu
In *this* directory, you have a symlink called ‘current‘, which points to a different location:
current -> /media/osmedia/linux/ubuntu/11.10
Here’s the rub: if anyone tries to mount the root (or sub path) of that NFS export (say /media/files/isos/osmedia) at a local point (say, /mnt/osmedia), the symlink will fail to work correctly because there is no path /media/osmedia/linux/ubuntu/11.10 on the local machine!
That’s not cool.
Here is another case where bind mounts will save your bacon!
Instead of using symlinks on the NFS host, use bind mounts – that way the path will still work when exported.