VFS Module - "Hide Dot At Top"
Alun Jones [auj]
auj at aber.ac.uk
Tue Oct 15 09:17:07 UTC 2019
Hi all,
I thought I'd submit this one as it might help someone else. If it ended up
in the distribution sources, I'd be delighted!
Background
==========
Back in January I encountered an interesting problem with Samba's
magic hiding of dot files. A piece of software was creating a lock
file, deep within a share, starting with a ".", then trying to delete it
moments later. With "hide dot files" on, the software was unable to
delete it because Windows was unwilling to delete a hidden file.
I didn't want to turn "hide dot files" off, since this would make
all Linux "~/.*" files visible under Windows (we have dual-boot
machines in our teaching labs, so almost everyone ends up with a bunch
of dotfiles over time).
So, at the time, I knocked together a very hacky solution by binary
patching the misbehaving software to use "_" as the first
letter of its lock file instead. Not a long term solution but it
allowed me to make a minimal change without affecting everyone else.
There's a full write-up of the saga at:
https://www.ty-penguin.org.uk/~auj/blog/2019/01/24/hidden/
Getting to the point
====================
It seemed to me that the best long-term approach was to use a VFS
module to hide dotfiles just at the top directory of the share,
while leaving them visible in subdirectories. Using vfs_offline
as a template I've done just that. It appears to work, so I thought
I'd submit it back, just in case anyone else finds it useful.
Usage
=====
In a share definition, add:
hide dot files = no
vfs objects = hide_dot_at_top
Source code
===========
See attached.
--
Dr. Alun Jones, auj at aber.ac.uk, 01970 622637
Mathemateg, Ffiseg a Chyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Aberystwyth
Mathematics, Physics & Computer Science, Aberystwyth University
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Prifysgol Aberystwyth www.aber.ac.uk
Prifysgol y Flwyddyn ar gyfer Ansawdd Dysgu - The Times & The Sunday Times 2019.
Aberystwyth University www.aber.ac.uk
University of the Year for Teaching Quality - The Times & The Sunday Times 2019.
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