[Samba] Filename problem (filenames containing slashes aka.\and /)

[rruegner]

Hi, i total agree with you, using a mac server, or and  educate the 
users will be the only solution which will work now and in the future.
If it such important to store this ugly named stuff on a fileserver 
costs will rise for sure, but costs shouldnt be the main problem if
you plan to setup a long term staying fileserver.
Regards

Simon Hobson schrieb:
> 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
>