Symlinks broken with vmhgfs on fusion

symlinkvmware

When I use VMware Fusion with an Ubuntu guest (it worked long ago, but this problem has existed over several generations of ubuntu, at least including natty, oneiric and precise) and shared folders using vmhgfs, no matter what I do, many of my symlinks are broken.

The ones that are broken are symlinks that point to files in subdirectories, such as foo -> bar/blah. They're broken because they're presented to linux as foo->bar.

Anyone have any idea what's going wrong? This has, in the past worked for me, but it just doesn't now. It seems like a bug in vmhgfs.

Please don't suggest using NFS, SMB, etc. I'm specifically interested in getting HGFS working.

Best Answer

the following solution does not properly fit the original question, as it does not provide a solution to use symlinks in the host as symlinks within guests. nevertheless it can be useful in certain situations, specially for windows guests:

Adding ...

sharedFolderX.followSymlinks = "TRUE"

to your .vmx file, where X stands for any given shared folder in question, makes the symlink transparent to the guest. so the symlinks now show as a regular file or folder within the guest. the mapping take place in the host.

this works for the following versions and above

  • VMware ACE 2.0.x
  • VMware Fusion 2.x
  • VMware Player 2.x (Linux)
  • VMware Workstation 6.x (Linux)

as of Dec 24, 2013.

please refer to the VMware KB article Symbolic Links Do Not Work in Folders Shared Between Linux/Mac Hosts and Windows Guests (1007277) for more details and affected/supported versions.

---- edit by Martin (as comments not yet allowed).
---- credits also to Mike as he provided the link to the VMware KB in his answer.

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