MS-DFS root dir access hangs if one ore more referred servers are down

[John E. Malmberg]

On Wed, 16 May 2001, Gerald Carter wrote:

> On Mon, 14 May 2001 06:44:40 Joachim Keltsch wrote:
> >
> > And I'm especially keen on the MS-DFS part, in which 
> > I unfortunately found a problem.
> > 
> > On browsing filesystem trees a NT Workstation seems to 
> > lookup files called "desktop.ini" in each node.
> > It also seems to do so in some sub nodes within 
> > a DFS share which results in a DFS referral to that 
> > machine.
> 
> The desktop.ini is an "Active Desktop" thing IIRC.
> Anyone know how to disable this?

The desktop.ini is part of the Windows Explorer, and is
present on versions of Windows prior to "Active Desktop"

Windows knows that you never want to actually see the file
so it will not display it, not even in a command session.

It is apparently only documented in some manuals for 
extending the windows shell.

I do not know any way of disabling the search.

I have not fully investigated what it can be used for,
but was hoping to use it to help integrate SAMBA with Windows.

With Windows NT, and some options installed, possibly known
as "FAST FIND",  other "perminently hidden" files are searched
for as well as desktop.ini.


I mentioned seeing this behavior last year while I was debugging
SAMBA 2.0.6 for OpenVMS.

I asked if anyone had figured out what to do with the file in
relation to SAMBA.

The only response I received was an assumed humorous suggestion to delete
it when found.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only