Mac connected to server gets strange filenames, sometimes.

April 10, 2008 1:03 PM

A mac on a network connects to a share point on the server and sees this instead of seeing this.

Restarting the client makes the problem go away, for a while.

Server is a DualG5 Xserve. Client is a G5. Both are running fully patched 10.4 server and 10.4, respectively.

What's going on?

posted by Wild_Eep to computers & internet (8 comments total)

have you tried doing a listing of the same directory from the Terminal when it's misbehaving? I'd be curious to see if the output was identical.
posted by pmbuko at 2:07 PM on April 10

Okay, here's my guess:

You're connecting to the share point using Samba, and, because asterisks in file names are bad in a Windows environment, it's fubar-ing your file names.

It's generally not a good idea to use special characters in file names in general, though I know why you did it -- different environments treat said characters differently.

Not-allowed Windows characters:
? [ ] / \ = + <> ; : " , | *

Not-allowed OS X characters:
:

Just a guess, since I've never seen that behaviour before. I'd try getting rid of the asterisks, and see if it continues to happen.
posted by liquado at 2:16 PM on April 10

I think liquado's got it. Notice that the fubar'd filenames are all 8 chars long? It's probably a Windows/Mac compatibility issue. Were the files originally created by a Windows client?
posted by edjusted at 2:22 PM on April 10

had this problem last year when we brought a pc into our mac network

liquado nailed it exactly
posted by Oktober at 2:46 PM on April 10

I was going to ask if it changes if you use afp:// or smb:// when connecting. I guess liquado beat me too it
posted by subaruwrx at 3:18 PM on April 10

Yep, totally a Windows/Mac filename/protocol thing. Used to see filenames like that when I'd log onto an Xserve via a Windows machine.
posted by limeonaire at 3:47 PM on April 10

I've seen this a lot, especially in windows client/linux server situations. Samba, being an SMB/CIFS implementation, uses the most constrained set of allowed characters and converts to DOS style 8.3 filenames otherwise.
posted by swapspace at 8:33 PM on April 10

swapspace: Thanks for saying it far nerdier -- and clearer -- than I did. :)
posted by liquado at 9:51 PM on April 10