Bug #38019 Symbolic links do not work with mapped drives
Submitted: 10 Jul 2008 14:50 Modified: 30 Jul 2008 23:08
Reporter: Scott Noyes Email Updates:
Status: Closed Impact on me:
None 
Category:MySQL Server: Documentation Severity:S3 (Non-critical)
Version:5.0.62 OS:Windows
Assigned to: Paul DuBois CPU Architecture:Any

[10 Jul 2008 14:50] Scott Noyes
Description:
Creating a symbolic link to a mapped network drive fails with "Can't create database t1 (error 2)"

How to repeat:
- Map a folder to drive Z:
- Create the folder Z:\t1
- In the data directory, create a file 't1.sym' that contains the line 'Z:\t1\'
- Login to mysql and issue SHOW DATABASES. t1 should appear; it does not.
- issue CREATE DATABASE t1; - get the error 'Can't create database t1 (error 2)'

If the same procedure is repeated with any location other than a mapped drive (to a USB key, to a path on the C: drive, to a network drive referenced with \\serverName\path) then it behaves correctly.

Suggested fix:
Using \\serverName\path should suffice as a workaround.
[14 Jul 2008 13:33] MySQL Verification Team
Stefan - I think we need a note in the documentation that when running MySQL as a service, you cannot use a mapped drive to a remote server as the destination of the symbolic link, but you can use the full path (\\servername\path\).

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/windows-symbolic-links.html

If you think it's too technical a detail to mention in the docs, I can just add a user comment instead.
[30 Jul 2008 23:08] Paul DuBois
Thank you for your bug report. This issue has been addressed in the documentation. The updated documentation will appear on our website shortly, and will be included in the next release of the relevant products.