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t_hah · Jul 16, 2004, 10:03 AM

The problem is the following:
Panther is connected to a Windows 2000 pachine. When copying a file over to the PC, a new ._xxxxx file is created. It can have whatever name, but always starts with a "._"

I used to be able to just delete these files, but now the system tells me that there are some sharing problems (and that the files are used) and I cannot trow these away anymore. Even if these files are months old.

Any solutions?

monkeybrain · Jul 16, 2004, 10:26 AM

Those are invisible files. In OS X any file beginning with a full stop (aka a 'period') is invisible, but Windows can see them.

One solution is to use Sharepoints to set up your sharing. There is an option under SMB Props to set file visibility.

Hope that helps

CatOne · Jul 16, 2004, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by t_hah:
The problem is the following:
Panther is connected to a Windows 2000 pachine. When copying a file over to the PC, a new ._xxxxx file is created. It can have whatever name, but always starts with a "._"

I used to be able to just delete these files, but now the system tells me that there are some sharing problems (and that the files are used) and I cannot trow these away anymore. Even if these files are months old.

Any solutions?

Why do you want to delete these files?!

Note, these files store the resource fork information. If you have any OS 9 created files that you copy over in this manner, and you delete the ._ files, you will lose all the resource fork data. Don't blame Apple if stuff gets screwed up after you delete this files... this behavior is BY DESIGN and it's a really bad idea to delete these files. They wouldn't be created if there wasn't a resource fork attached, so you're deleting some content of the file.

SMacTech · Jul 16, 2004, 10:55 AM

You don't want to just delete these files as an earlier poster stated. Why don't you turn on Services for Macintosh on your server for the Mac clients? That will eliminate those files for you, albeit at the cost of using SFM, in which I use ExtremeZ-IP for better results.

t_hah · Jul 16, 2004, 11:00 AM

Why are they visible on the PC even if the hidden file viewing option is turned off?

tooki · Jul 16, 2004, 11:24 AM

Because Windows doesn't follow the UNIX industry-standard of hiding files that start with a period?

The weird thing is, Windows (with NTFS) supports Mac files, resource forks and all. But unless you connect using AFP (the only network protocol that has native resource fork support), you can't do it. OS X creates the dot-files so that the files will survive a resource fork unaware network protocol. The Mac seamlessly puts the files back together on the Mac end.

tooki

goose · Jul 16, 2004, 11:30 AM

Originally posted by t_hah:
Why are they visible on the PC even if the hidden file viewing option is turned off?

I think file visibility on Windows is determined by file type, which in Windows is determined by file extension. Dot files as hidden files was more of a *nix thing.

t_hah · Jul 16, 2004, 02:36 PM

Thank you guys for the help.

t

Voch · Jul 16, 2004, 03:02 PM

I have a DEMAC.BAT on my PC file with the following content.

Code:
@echo off
attrib -h .DS_Store /s
del .DS_Store /s
attrib -h ._* /s
del ._* /s

I use it to clean up those ".DS_Store" and "._*" files only when I don't care about the resource information for the files. This recursively deletes all the ".DS_Store" and "._*" files in the current directory and subdirectories from where it is run (I run it from, say, the root of my D: drive to clean up the entire D drive). Since I never keep, say, Mac OS 9 application files on my PC (or anything else with resource fork information) it's safe for me to run.

DO NOT run this if you keep resource-fork based files on your PC for use on your Mac. I use it because all I share between my Mac and my PC are data files (MP3s, MPGs, AVIs, etc.).

You could also just ignore these hidden files if you want. They don't hurt anything on your PC.

Voch

monkeybrain · Jul 16, 2004, 03:59 PM

What type of file is resource fork based? I thought Apple was phasing them out.

CatOne · Jul 16, 2004, 04:42 PM

Originally posted by monkeybrain:
What type of file is resource fork based? I thought Apple was phasing them out.

OS 9 stores info in resource forks.

Many OS X applications store info in resource folks, as well (in particular, many carbon apps). Photoshop stores JPEG previews in resource forks -- when you can see a preview of the picture in the finder, that's in the resource fork. Delete it and you'll get the plain JPEG preview.