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We added 2 Mac's to our Windows network. We are finding that some users are deleting the Mac hidden files that provide Finder meta data. Also, if a Mac user moves a file to another folder, they don't know to move any other files associated with it.

Would implementing a ZFS-based file server be a better alternative? Is there any known issues with mac's and pc's reading from a zfs-based file server? Is there anything equivalent to Microsoft DFS technologies for replicating data across multiple servers? Does it provide iSCSI support?

Markaway
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  • You might be mixing things together that aren't applicable to the problem. How would DFS or iSCSI help in this scenario? If a user moves a file to a new DFS folder without moving the metadata, DFS isn't going to move the metadata to the new folder either. DFS is going to replicate the files where they exist but it isn't going to move them from one folder to a different folder. – joeqwerty Feb 22 '13 at 18:44

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ZFS as such doesn't help with this at all. What makes you think it would? The problem is that most of the extended informations/metadata could be written into NTFS alternate data streams or extended attributes on Linux but the file sharing protocols (likely SMB) doesn't (properly) support this so MacOS writes auxiliary files to save this information, which have no real connection to the primary file and tend to get lost if anything like moving or renaming is done to the file on the Windows side.

This problem is the same if you use ZFS and some Solaris/BSD/Linux file server, e.g. with Samba: The metadata isn't properly connected to the file.

Sven
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The problem is going to be using Macs writing to any filesystem not HFS+. You have to leave things like they are, or use a product that helps the integration more. ExtremeZ-IP is the gold standard for this, but it's expensive.

churnd
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    -1 If this is over the network, like the question sounds (NFS, CIFS, SMB, AFP, whatever) then OS X is unaware of the underlying file system and it doesn't care. That's the whole point of file sharing protocols. There's no reason you'd need HFS+ on the other end of an NFS share, for example. – MDMarra Feb 22 '13 at 15:59
  • Disagree. OP states users are deleting the "extra" stuff OS X writes to the non-HFS filesystem shares, which can be frustrating for OS X users & why products like ExtremeZ-IP were created. – churnd Feb 22 '13 at 16:10
  • If I understand ExtremeZ-IP correctly, it's just an AFP gateway to other protocols. I'm sure it does a great job with what it does, but the behavior of OS X over something like NFS or SMB aren't magical. Also, that "extra" stuff like all of the dot-files for finder prefs are just hidden files that non-unix-like operating systems don't recognize as hidden. It has nothing to do with HFS+ or the protocol that it's shared with. – MDMarra Feb 22 '13 at 16:25