Comments on: Mac connected to server gets strange filenames, sometimes.

Question: Mac connected to server gets strange filenames, sometimes.

Wild_Eep — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:03:22 -0800

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?

By: pmbuko

pmbuko — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:07:47 -0800

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.

By: liquado

liquado — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:16:00 -0800

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.

By: edjusted

edjusted — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:22:15 -0800

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?

By: Oktober

Oktober — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0800

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

liquado nailed it exactly

By: subaruwrx

subaruwrx — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:18:01 -0800

I was going to ask if it changes if you use afp:// or smb:// when connecting. I guess liquado beat me too it

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:47:57 -0800

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.

By: swapspace

swapspace — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:33:47 -0800

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.

By: liquado

liquado — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:51:24 -0800

swapspace: Thanks for saying it far nerdier -- and clearer -- than I did. :)