When I have symlinks in a share, and mount that share over CIFS to my Mac, the symlinks show as copies of the file, rather than symlinks.

 

For example, if I have a share at /mnt/user/test mounted on the Mac at /Volumes/test, and the share contains a file called "test", then I see this:

 

$ ls -l /Volumes/test
-rwx------  1 user  staff 10  4 Feb 10:00 test
$ ssh unraid
# cd /mnt/user/test
# ln -s ./test othertest
# ls -l
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root  root 1024  4 Feb 10:00 test
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root  root   21  4 Feb 10:01 othertest -> ./test
# exit
$ ls -l /Volumes/test
-rwx------  1 user  staff 1024  4 Feb 10:00 test
-rwx------  1 user  staff 1024  4 Feb 10:01 othertest

 

The file "othertest" appears on the Mac as a plain file which is an exact copy of "test". Changes made to one show in the other.

 

If I create a symlink on the Mac, however, it shows up properly:

$ cd /Volumes/test
$ ln -s ./test yetanothertest
$ ls -l
-rwx------  1 user  staff 1024  4 Feb 10:01 othertest
-rwx------  1 user  staff 1024  4 Feb 10:00 test
lrwx------  1 user  staff   21  4 Feb 10:00 yetanothertest -> ./test

 

Unfortunately, I need to do stuff on the Mac side where the symlinks actually appear as symlinks. Is there a way I can configure it so symlinks work as expected, or do I have to deal with the horrors of NFS for this?

I think you will find that over normal CIFS network shares you cannot see symlinks as being links (at least that is my experience).   No idea if using NFS will give you what you wand.