Syslink to network folder and admin rights issues

[bbqsquirt]

Just purchased a new licence for FileBot and having issues. Here's my setup:

Downloads go to DriveA:/IncompleteFolder which is a network share attached to my router. After download finishes, I move it to DriveA:/Movies/MovieName/Movie.mkv. Then I have to go into qbittorrent and manually re-locate the files, force recheck and leave it for looooongterm seeding.

Purchased FileBot thinking it would automate this process by creating symlinks for longterm seeding but having issues. FileBot can move and rename files but it is unable to to create hardlinks/symlinks without Admin Rights. Launching FileBot with admin rights makes the process work for local files, EXCEPT I can't access network shares when using filebot with admin rights.

I tried turning on Windows 10 developer mode as some googling suggested this should allow symlinks without admin rights but that's not working either.

[rednoah]

You can't create symlinks on remote network shares. AFAIK, you're out of luck on Windows, as you're probably stuck with SMB as network file system. On Unix platforms, you could use NFS which does support the usual Unix file system features even via remote file system mounts.


Windows will require admin rights to attempt symlink operations, and then immediately fail because SMB fundamentally doesn't support symlink operations with some arbitrary possibly misleading error message.


TL;DR While your device is probably Linux based and thus supports symlinks on the local file system level, the SMB network file system protocol does not make these features available to remote clients.



EDIT:

If you are Linux-savvy, and have a powerful router, then you could probably run FileBot via SSH on the device itself, which then allows you to symlink and hardlink to your hearts content.

[bbqsquirt]

Thanks for the quick response. Will it be the same issue if I buy a NAS device down the line for media storage?

[rednoah]

Yes, it'll be the same. On Windows, you'll only be able to create symlinks on local NTFS file systems, and you will not be able to create symlinks on remote SMB file systems.

[bbqsquirt]

Have any ideas on how else i can achieve what I'm trying to do? I'm all ears. I'll keep the 1 year license

[rednoah]

If you are Linux-savvy, and have a powerful router, then you could probably run FileBot via SSH on the device itself, which then allows you to symlink and hardlink to your hearts content.


I can personally recommend Synology NAS devices of you want to run FileBot on-device (i.e. local file system access). FileBot is well supported and there's even a basic WebUI. Make sure to get a model with at least 512 MB or RAM though, ideally one with x86_64 or aarch64 CPU for future-proofing things.


You could also go with a Raspberry Pi 4 as file server, instead of your router, and then run FileBot locally there. That would be a low-cost DIY solution, though you'll need to acquire some Linux-savvyness on the way.

[bbqsquirt]

Ok so I plugged in my hard drive straight to the machine instead of the router so now I have filebot configured. Using the AMC script. I changed the script to "--action hardlink". Files are getting organized like I want. My only remaining question is, how do I ensure the files are hardlinked and not actually duplicated? (apart from checking for disk space?)

[rednoah]

--action hardlink will either create a hardlink, or fail. If it doesn't fail, then you know that a new hardlink was created, and not a physical copy. Creating hardlinks will also be instant, while physically copying files takes much much longer.


Generally speaking, you can check for hardlinks and find hardlinks via the inode number and reference count file system attributes:
https://superuser.com/a/12974/349721

[bbqsquirt]

Sweet thanks dude! and happy new year