topic Re: Does ABE support widelinks? in ONTAP Discussions

Does ABE support widelinks?

andre_koch — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:28:55 GMT

HI there

we just testing widelinks in conjunction wit abe enable shares. As soon we enable ABE, the access to widelink relocate does not work anymore. Error "Windows cannot access \\blabla\bla.
Has anybody sucessful implemented widelink with ABE enabled shares?

Re: Does ABE support widelinks?

parisi — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 16:07:45 GMT

I'm guessing the issue here is that with ABE, you only see the shares you have access to. If the account you're using can't see the share, then it can't redirect.

I enabled ABE on my shares and my widelinks work fine.

::> cifs share properties show -vserver DEMO -share-name files,flexgroup
Vserver Share Properties
---------------- ------------------------- -----------------------------
DEMO files oplocks
browsable
changenotify
access-based-enumeration
show-previous-versions
DEMO flexgroup oplocks
browsable
changenotify
access-based-enumeration
show-previous-versions

This is my widelink - it points to the "files" CIFS share.

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 Feb 16 11:14 remote-link -> /mnt/client1/dir1/dir2/linked-dir

These are the pertinent widelink mapping entries:

::> cifs symlink show -vserver DEMO
Vserver Unix Path CIFS Server CIFS Share CIFS Path Locality
---------- --------------- --------------- ----------- -------------- --------
DEMO /mnt/client1/ DEMO files / local
DEMO /mnt/client2/ DEMO flexgroup / local

I can redirect just fine:

You may want to try flushing the dfsutil cache.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/dfsutil

You might also want to try disabling DFS advertisements for that symlink with the -symlink-properties values symlinks,no_strict_security.

https://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/topic/com.netapp.doc.cdot-famg-cifs/GUID-21E02C23-A83F-462D-BC4B-98240FA5BB34.html

If that still doesn't help, I'd suggest opening a case.

Re: Does ABE support widelinks?

andre_koch — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 16:57:09 GMT

Hi thank you for your quick response

I will check that again, maybe there is something wrong in my configuration.
Did the widelink also working when the parent share is ABE enabled as in the example below?

/ (root)
- data1/ (ABE enabled share “data1”)
- folder1
- folder2
- folder3
- widelink -> to another share (also ABE enabled)

Re: Does ABE support widelinks?

parisi — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 17:14:37 GMT

Both the parent and destination shares had ABE enabled.

Re: Does ABE support widelinks?

tahmad — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 04:04:46 GMT

Hello @andre_koch , was your issue resolved?