[Samba] Filename problem (filenames containing slashes aka.\and /)
Simon Hobson
shobson-lists at colony.com
Wed Sep 22 08:54:47 GMT 2004
Mark C. Casey wrote:
>We _cannot_ go about renaming files, for a
>number of reasons.. the primary being some of
>the files are technically not ours to alter
>without a clients permission (names and all) and
>you don't understand just how many files there
>are. There are quite probably thousands of
>files, spread across _hundreds_ of cds and dvds
>which comes to a total of roughly 400GB.
I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't
change the situation - that no-one has a
'solution' for you. Perhaps there is some 'middle
ground' you can explore (see below).
>As to a Mac server, i'm not sure how much they
>cost but i'm guessing a lot for what i'm wanting.
>
>I'm planning on building a RAID-5 fileserver
>running Linux (still undecided on distro) most
>likely running Netatalk and Samba. The server
>itself i'm planning for roughly 1TB of storage,
>possibly more. (at the moment in my plans it
>calls for 6x 250GB hdd's which gives me 1.2TB)
>
>The cost of the above if I use Linux (and build
>it myself) comes to roughly £1000, which i'm
>guessing is a damn sight cheaper than a Mac
>equivalent server solution. (hell that's cheaper
>than a normal Mac tower)
You are right that a Mac server will cost more than your home-brew Linux box.
FWIW, I recently had to decide how to equip our
Design department with their own fileserver. I
decided to put in a G5 XServe so that OS X could
take care of any file name mangling required
(Samba is an integral service with OS X Server).
When I get time the plan is to integrate it with
the LDAP database from the main fileserver. I
also felt it was 'safer' given that Netatalk
still has issues (not least that it stores files
differently to OS X via Samba) and they still
have OS 9 machines which don't natively talk to
Samba servers. To be perfectly honest, the price
wasn't all that much more than buying a rack
mount Dell server - especially taking all the
'incidental' costs (how much will it cost you to
fix your filenames ?) into account. BTW, you
haven't said how many users, you might find that
you can 'liberate' a G4 that's due for an upgrade
from someones desk, stick on OS X Server 10 user,
and have an adequate server (400G isn't much BTW
- our XServe has 500G of space available on raid
5 (3x250G disks) and I expect to have to switch
to an external XRaid in a year or two when we run
out of capacity.)
So where can you go from here ? Well the obvious
(but not very helpful) response is not to start
from here ! Going forward you must educate your
designers to avoid all characters that have any
issues with cross platform compatibility - it is
the only long term solution. For existing work,
do you really, absolutely, HAVE to put it all on
the server ? For stuff that's "spread across
_hundreds_ of cds and dvds" just leave it there
until you have to do some work on it, and fix the
problems as you come to them.
As to stuff that you'd need a clients permission
to alter, well go and ask them ! Many of your
clients are probably having the same issues and
wishing they could change the names "but they
can't because the designers did it that way" and
are afraid to ask you to change them. Combine
that with only fixing stuff when you have to
change anything (ie when a client comes back for
some changes, get permission to sort the
filenames) and I think you'll find that the scale
of the problem is reduced significantly.
Simon
--
Simon Hobson MA MIEE, Technology Specialist
Colony Gift Corporation Limited
Lindal in Furness, Ulverston, Cumbria, LA12 0LD
Tel 01229 461100, Fax 01229 461101
Registered in England No. 1499611
Regd. Office : 100 New Bridge Street, London, EC4V 6JA.
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