Background:

Most of our desktops are Windows, and most users are Windows-based, but the back-end servers have historically been UNIX-based (Samba for CIFS access), and we put a few "." files in place for each user, in case they use UNIX directly.

Under UNIX, filenames beginning with "." are conventionally regarded as hidden: for example they don't show in the output from "ls". Similarly, when a UNIX filesystem is viewed via Samba from a Windows box, again the "." files are hidden from the users.

We have just acquired two NetApp fileservers, running 6.1.2R1, and have noticed that the "." files are presented to the (mostly Windows) users.

While this isn't a show-stopper, we wondered whether there was a option of telling the NetApp to classify "." files as hidden. Or something similar. Either now, or planned for later versions.

You can set the "hidden" attribute on the dot files. The Windows users need to have their system preferences set to not show hidden files. From windows, you can set the hidden attribute in the file properties. There's probably an easy way to script this, but I'm not a Windows admin.

You can set the hidden attribute from Unix with the smbclient command from the samba package. smbclient is interactive. At the command prompt, type:

setmode filename +h

smbclient will read commands from stdin, so you can build a file of setmode commands and run them like this:

smbclient //filer/sharename -U root < commandfile

Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 434-924-0640

University of Virginia ITC Unix Support