Re: x86 file server

On Dec 1, 2004, at 11:52 AM, Glen Gibson wrote:

> We have a number of Mac computers that need to be able to share files 
> with
> each other via a Fileserver.
>
> Using smb on a Windows Server 2003 platform doesn't always cut it 
> (this is
> what has been implemented before I started) because of the lost 
> resource
> fork problems associated with files created on Macs.

Are your Mac clients running OS X or some earlier version of MacOS? 
MacOS X should support resource forks on SMB filesystems -- it stores 
the resource fork for "foo" as a file called "._foo". Is this not 
working for you?

> If I install Darwin on an x86 server (it's all I have available to me) 
> and
> partition/format it using the HFS+ filesystem, will this overcome the
> problems with resource forks?

Darwin doesn't include the AFP server, so you would have to share over 
either SMB (using samba), NFS, WebDAV, etc. These all use the same ._ 
trick I mentioned above.

> Also if the resource forks are preserved with HFS+ on this x86 server,
> will SMB or NFS interfere with the resource forks at all?

Clients using SMB and NFS use the same convention for storing resource 
forks, so you shouldn't have any interference. If you were to also 
serve the same files over AFP (on OS X, since Darwin doesn't have AFP), 
you would have problems, since AFP clients will expect forked files 
whereas SMB/NFS clients will use the ._ trick.

> One other question:
> If I use HFS+ on this x86 server, will the filesystem be journalled 
> like
> it can be on the Mac or not?  Do I get the option of making it 
> journalled?

You can't install Darwin-x86 on HFS+ as far as I know, but you can make 
other volumes HFS+, and you can use journalling.

Ronnie