Re: Symlinks for the Freelance root.afs volume

Rodney M Dyer wrote:

> At 11:36 AM 10/28/04, Jeffrey Altman wrote:
> 
>> Rodney M Dyer wrote:
>>
>>> So in theory, does this solve my problem of wanting to place an 
>>> artificial file called "desktop.ini" in the root for naming the AFS 
>>> volume for the Explorer file browser?  Can you create a symlink 
>>> called "desktop.ini" that points to a real "desktop.ini" out in AFS 
>>> somewhere?
>>> Rodney
>>
>>
>> I don't know.  Try it.  We filter out all requests to find 
>> "desktop.ini" and reject them because of performance issues.
> 
> 
> Strange, the filter isn't working too well.  I have a desktop.ini file 
> in my home user volume root and Explorer picks it up just fine.  I will 
> try it though.

I took a look at this.  What we do is filter any DESKTOP.INI request and
block it whenever the cell has not previously been successfully 
accessed.  So if you are active in your home directory then the attempt
to read desktop.ini will succeed.

Now I get to ask the questions.  When you say that the desktop.ini file
is picked up just fine, do you mean that you can read it?  Or do you 
mean that Windows is paying attention to the contents?

According to

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/custom.asp

in order for the DESKTOP.INI file to be obeyed the folder it resides in 
must be marked with the SYSTEM attribute.  Now you can't set the SYSTEM 
attribute on a folder in AFS.  We don't have support for DOS and 
Extended DOS attributes (yet).  [Somebody please fund this project.]
I experimented with forcing the SYSTEM attribute on the \\AFS\\all\ 
folder but it did not appear to make a difference for me.

If you have any ideas please let us know.

Jeffrey Altman