[Samba] Problems with offline files and Explorer 'hangs'

[Damir Dezeljin]

Hi Don.

> I think this whole 'offline' file attribute thing is being misread (maybe by
> me...).  But I THINK what this is really doing is when you are connected to
> a network share, you have the ability to mark files or folders to be
> "available  offline".  And what this REALLY does is make local copies of the
> files/folders, so that if you ...
No the problem isn't connected with Windows capabilities to make offline 
copies of shared resources. To ilustrate what I meant, I put an picture of 
my Win2k Explorer accessing a shared resource on Win2k server which has 
some offline files (that with 0 bytes filesize - I intentionally create 
those files with size == 0 bytes) - http://www.dezo.org/offline.jpg. Note 
the litle gear on the file icon.  This means that the file is offline and 
Windows explorer shows an default icon associated with this file type.
(this works with Win2k, WinXP and WinNT sp6 Windows Explrer)

This feture is very usefullin combination with HSM products and with 
directory with a lot of files with icons.

On NTFS this offline flag is representet with a bit set to 1 in 32bit 
metadata asociated with the file (lihe hidden or archive atribute) is than 
applications thing to do anything usefull with it.

Regards,
Dezo