samba - Nov 2008 - Mac .DS_Stores

Hi all. We have a file server using samba with a lot of Mac clients.  
Mac uses files called .DS_Store to store information about the layout  
of the files in the directory. We have a hierarchal storage system,  
and don't want to back up the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands  
of .DS_store files. Currently we have a policy in place that these  
files don't get backed up, but they still get created in the samba  
shares, which is annoying because when a non-Mac user accesses the  
folder there are a bunch of these files that they don't care about,  
and when you restore something you get thousands of warnings that  
these files can't be restored. Has anyone out there found a better  
solution for Mac clients? I guess my concern is if I block the files  
from being created in the first place the Mac clients will go bonkers  
because they can't change the view of the directory.

At 02:45 AM Tuesday, 11/25/2008, Mike Gallamore wrote
-=>
>Hi all. We have a file server using samba with a lot of Mac clients.
>Mac uses files called .DS_Store to store information about the layout
>of the files in the directory. We have a hierarchal storage system,
>and don't want to back up the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands
>of .DS_store files. Currently we have a policy in place that these
>files don't get backed up, but they still get created in the samba
>shares, which is annoying because when a non-Mac user accesses the
>folder there are a bunch of these files that they don't care about,
>and when you restore something you get thousands of warnings that
>these files can't be restored. Has anyone out there found a better
>solution for Mac clients? I guess my concern is if I block the files
>from being created in the first place the Mac clients will go bonkers
>because they can't change the view of the directory.

 From Wikipedia:

".DS_Store (Desktop Services Store) is a hidden 
file created by Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X operating 
system to store custom attributes of a folder 
such as the position of icons or the choice of a 
background image. By default, the Mac OS X Finder 
will create a .DS_Store file in every folder that 
it accesses, even folders on remote systems (for 
example, folders shared over a SMB or AFP 
connection) and even if the user has only 
customized the appearance of the folder by moving 
its Finder window. This is in contrast to the 
preexisting system for the same purpose used in 
previous versions of the Finder, which would 
merely place a number of invisible files at the 
root of the volume being accessed (even on alien 
file systems), always storing the settings and 
metadata for all of the folders in the entire 
volume within this single set of files.

"After complaints from users about these files 
being created on remote systems, Apple posted an 
article on its support site detailing how to 
disable the creation of remote .DS_Store files 
over network connections. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1629

"Note that suppressing the creation of .DS_Store 
files is only possible on network drives such as 
file servers ? they will still always be created 
on local drives, including flash drives or 
anything that appears as a flash drive. The 
creation of .DS_Store and related files on 
flash-like drives is known to cause problems with 
some embedded devices that do not expect those 
files, including several popular models of digital photo frames.

"Although these files were initially primarily 
used by the Finder they were envisioned as a more 
general purpose store of metadata about the 
display options of folders such as icon position 
and view settings. For example, since Mac OS X 
10.4 "Tiger", .DS_Store files contain the 
Spotlight Comments of all the folder's files.

"Prior to the release Mac OS X 10.5, .DS_Store 
files would be visible on the Windows filesystem."

Depending on how many Mac's are in your 
environment, the above referenced solution will 
take you some time to implement.  HTH...

Ed

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On Nov 27, 2008, at 10:59 PM, Nozy wrote:
> Hi Mike
>
> why not get the system to remove the be for the backup start ?
We have 160TB of data, long long time to do a find on the space. In  
fact, we have some directories so large that a "ls" crashes (millions
and millions of files generated by an image processing app). The  
backups are done on the system live, we are using Sun's SAMFS which  
schedules the backups as it thinks it needs to (essentially it  
decreases the time between backup if a lot of data has been changing,  
if not then it waits up to the pre-specified time you give
it).
>
> or veto them after you have clear them out I use a mixed net work  
> here I
> just have my centos box to remove the files or veto them the mac will
> work with out them.
Might work, thanks.
> Nozy
>
>
> On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 10:12 +0100, Mike Gallamore wrote:
>> Yeah those seem pretty helpful. Part of the problem is how the
>> backup
>> system handles them. It keeps track of all the files that are on the
>> disk and keeps copies of them. We have a policy in the system to not
>> backup the .DS_Store files, but the other part of the system still
>> tries to recover the data, then complains because naturally it
can't
>> find a backup copy of the file. Really sucks because some of our
>> users
>> have millions of files in thousands of directories, you can't
really
>> follow the restore process because you get countless pages of
>> "warning
>> this file couldn't be restored" messages on your term.
>> On Nov 25, 2008, at 11:12 PM, Nozy wrote:
>