Re: Converting Macintosh Files

Hi William,

Part of our Disaster Recovery plan depends on Microsoft's Data Protection
Manager which is basically a product that replicates files and changes to
files over the network on a nearly continuous basis. The only data we're
having trouble with is the Macintosh data that's stored on the one server
that's running SFM.

Microsoft says that the Macintosh data may contain "alternate streams" which
could be causing a problem. Not to sound like an idiot but I don't know
exactly what that means (is that related to forks?). We're having problems
with really long filenames and filenames that have unsupported characters
among other things. If I'm understanding correctly, which I'm probably not,
you're saying that for each Macintosh file on the network, there's a hidden
(or not hidden) file "._filename" which corresponds to it?

Thanks for the reply and any additional help you can give me!

"William Smith" <mecklists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mecklists-74FF8F.20492128022006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <eGnY8aMPGHA.2828@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Lisa Parris" <lisa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi. Please bear with me as I don't know very much about Macintoshes.

We have have several servers in our organization. Most of our clients are
using Windows XP but we have three users in our creative department using
Macintosh OS X.

For many years we were running Services for Macinotsh on our "creative"
server. We just installed a new server and had to intention of
eliminating
SFM and having the clients connect via SMB. When we moved the data from
the
old server to the new one, the files lost all their "resource forks" ,
etc.
and the users can't get their files to work properly connecting via SMB

So, I guess the questions are 1) Is this to be expected or did we somehow
move the data over the wrong way? And if so, how should we have gone
about
it 2) Assuming the answer to #1 is that this is to be expected, is there
some utility or some way for us to convert the files so that the resource
info is "attached" to the file?

We need to get rid of SFM for a variety of reasons, mainly because we'd
using some software that's not compatible with it in our disaster
recovery
infrastructure.

Hi Lisa!

Your Mac files may not have lost their resource forks. If you copied the
files from one NTFS partition to another (not FAT or FAT32) then you
probably still have the resource forks. However, when you connect via
SMB, your Mac won't be able to see the resource forks. SMB doesn't
support them.

Mac OS X works around this issue by splitting the resource fork and the
data fork prior to copying files to the server. The data is in the file
with the same name but the resource information is store in
"._filename". If you've copied any files to the server via SMB then your
Windows users are probably noticing these files.

While Mac OS X's SMB is good for getting the occasional file from a Mac
to a Windows user, it's not a very robust and can cause strange
permissions issue such as the inability to delete or rename files, etc.

If you have relatively few Macs then I'd recommend using Dave or
ADmitMac from <http://www.thursby.com>. These are much better SMB
clients.

Or if you have several Macs then I'd recommend a better AFP server
solution such as ExtremeZ-IP from <http://www.group.logic.com>. I don't
understand how SFM can impede a disaster recovery plan of any type. Can
you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Hope this helps! bill
--
William M. Smith
(Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows)


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Mac to PC file sharing issues on SBS2003
    ... > Actually I still hesitate between sbs 2003 or an OS X server. ... did you choose smb or services for mac? ... Your choice between SMB and SFM is relatively easy - will the OS X Macs ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: MAC and SBS
    ... read about disabling SMB signing, or access netwok via SMB, what is the ... Connecting Mac OS X 10.3 and Higher Clients to a Windows Small Business ... Connecting a Macintosh to SBS 2003 Server via SMB ...
    (microsoft.public.backoffice.smallbiz)
  • Re: Home directory for Mac
    ... > WinXP setup perfectly in that the home directories are on the server. ... Take a look at these links for AFP and SMB connections from the Mac to SBS: ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: Cannot talk to mac services through IPSEC vpn
    ... Can you ping the server from the Mac? ... issue alone if SMB connections are failing as well. ... Is this blocked within your company's VPN networking? ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.macintosh)
  • Re: Converting Macintosh Files
    ... We just installed a new server and had to intention of eliminating ... SFM and having the clients connect via SMB. ... Your Mac files may not have lost their resource forks. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.macintosh)
Loading