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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