Samba is modifying the contents of symbolic links that are created with ':' in them.  It shouldn't be modifying the contents of symlinks.  See below:

> First, the contents of a symbolic link do not have to be a file name, which
> means that file system restrictions are irrelevant in symlink contents. I
> can create a symbolic link from 'foo' to 'a:/never/never/land', and that's
> OK even if 'a:/never/never/land' does not and cannot exist.
> 
> Second, the file system in question was a Fedora tmpfs file system mounted
> via CIFS, and this specific file system (tmpfs) does allow ':' in file
> names. CIFS should not arbitrarily exclude ':' when both client and server
> allow ':' in file names.

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1271407 +++

Description of problem:
Emacs creates a corrupted symlink on a CIFS share when editing a file, and then fails to delete it when closing the file.  This doesn't happen for local files.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
emacs-24.5-2.fc21.x86_64
kernel-4.1.6-100.fc21.x86_64

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. emacs /path/to/CIFS/mount/foo
2. start making changes
3. look at the .#foo symlink created, it has a funny character between the PID and another large number.
4. Save and exit emacs.
5. The symlink stays behind and is not deleted.

Actual results:

CIFS share shows a funny character in the symlink:

-rw-rw-r--. 1 cra cra        0 Oct 13 18:04 foo
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 cra cra       39 Oct 13  2015 .#foo -> cra1441383545

The funny character between 3315 and 1441383545 is "ef 80 a2" in hex:

>cat | hexdump -C 

00000000  ef 80 a2 0a                                       |....|
00000004

Local file (ext4) shows no funny character:

-rw-r-----.   1 cra cra      9 Oct 13 18:04 foo
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 cra cra     37 Oct 13 18:09 .#foo ->  cra:cra.edu.3346:1441383545

Expected results:
No funny character in the symlink content.  The symlink should be removed by emacs upon closing the file.

Additional info:
The CIFS server is Centos 5 running samba-3.0.33-3.40.el5_10.

--- Additional comment from Charles R. Anderson on 2015-10-13 18:16:14 EDT ---

Correction to Local file (ext4) shows no funny character:

-rw-r-----.   1 cra cra      9 Oct 13 18:04 foo
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 cra cra     37 Oct 13 18:09 .#foo -> cra:1441383545

--- Additional comment from Fedora End Of Life on 2015-11-04 05:11:54 EST ---

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--- Additional comment from Fedora End Of Life on 2015-12-02 10:41:06 EST ---

Fedora 21 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2015-12-01. Fedora 21 is
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--- Additional comment from Charles R. Anderson on 2016-01-25 17:08:22 EST ---

Still an issue with F23.  Maybe this is a Samba bug rather than an Emacs bug?

--- Additional comment from Charles R. Anderson on 2016-01-25 17:11:05 EST ---

I think this is an Emacs bug.  The same problem happens with symlinks on a CIFS share from a samba-3.0.33-3.40.el5_10 EL5 server and also a samba-4.2.3-11.el7_2.x86_64 EL7 server.

--- Additional comment from Charles R. Anderson on 2016-07-22 09:45:51 EDT ---

Still exists on Fedora 24.

emacs-25.0.95-2.fc24.x86_64
kernel-4.6.4-301.fc24.x86_64

--- Additional comment from Jan Synacek on 2016-10-10 07:56:34 EDT ---

This still happens with emacs-25.1-1.fc24.x86_64.

You can work around this by turning off interlocking:

(setq create-lockfiles nil)

Reported at https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=24656.

--- Additional comment from Paul Eggert on 2016-10-11 15:45:30 EDT ---

This is a bug in Samba, not in Emacs. I can reproduce the bug without Emacs on a CIFS file system (locally mounted, Fedora 24) by running this simple C program:

#include <unistd.h>
int main (void) { return symlink ("a:b", "f") != 0; }

This creates a symbolic link from "f" to "a<F022>b", where "<F022>" stands for the UTF-8 representation for U+F022, i.e., the bytes EF, 80, A2.

--- Additional comment from Jan Synacek on 2016-10-12 05:18:57 EDT ---

The workaround can be found at http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=1dd54e3eef7543720eff161457677a35fae2435c.

--- Additional comment from Paul Eggert on 2016-10-12 11:28:57 EDT ---

Since the bug is in Samba, the "Component" field of this bug report should be changed from "emacs" to "samba".

--- Additional comment from Charles R. Anderson on 2016-10-12 11:50:45 EDT ---

(In reply to Paul Eggert from comment #10)
> Since the bug is in Samba, the "Component" field of this bug report should
> be changed from "emacs" to "samba".

How is using a character that isn't allowed on a specific filesystem considered to be a bug in that filesystem?  It seems to me to be an emacs bug to assume that any character is allowed to be used... If emacs tried to use '/' in a filename it wouldn't be considerd a bug in Ext4 would it?  Just like '/' is a path separator in Unix filesystems, ':' is a path separator in other filesystems.

--- Additional comment from Paul Eggert on 2016-10-12 12:36:06 EDT ---

(In reply to Charles R. Anderson from comment #11)

> How is using a character that isn't allowed on a specific filesystem
> considered to be a bug in that filesystem?

First, the contents of a symbolic link do not have to be a file name, which means that file system restrictions are irrelevant in symlink contents. I can create a symbolic link from 'foo' to 'a:/never/never/land', and that's OK even if 'a:/never/never/land' does not and cannot exist.

Second, the file system in question was a Fedora tmpfs file system mounted via CIFS, and this specific file system (tmpfs) does allow ':' in file names. CIFS should not arbitrarily exclude ':' when both client and server allow ':' in file names.

--- Additional comment from Charles R. Anderson on 2016-10-12 12:44:16 EDT ---

(In reply to Paul Eggert from comment #12)
> (In reply to Charles R. Anderson from comment #11)
> 
> > How is using a character that isn't allowed on a specific filesystem
> > considered to be a bug in that filesystem?
> 
> First, the contents of a symbolic link do not have to be a file name, which
> means that file system restrictions are irrelevant in symlink contents. I
> can create a symbolic link from 'foo' to 'a:/never/never/land', and that's
> OK even if 'a:/never/never/land' does not and cannot exist.
> 
> Second, the file system in question was a Fedora tmpfs file system mounted
> via CIFS, and this specific file system (tmpfs) does allow ':' in file
> names. CIFS should not arbitrarily exclude ':' when both client and server
> allow ':' in file names.

Okay, I'll clone this bug for samba then, but leave this one as-is so the emacs workaround can be released for Fedora.  We need the workaround since Samba servers won't necessarily be upgraded on the same schedule as Fedora clients.