Thanks to Emmett Hogan, who I think was too shy to post to the whole list.

Emmett suggested that I try smbclient, which just so happens to be installed on the unix NFS client where I create the accounts.

With smbclient I can make a CIFS connection and get a command line prompt. At the prompt I can type "setmode filename +h" and this turns on the DOS hidden bit for filename.

I can feed a file of commands to smbclient, so I think I will modify my bulk account script to use tar, which will be much faster than restore.

As I build the accounts I will create a file of smbclient commands to run to set the DOS hidden bits. The file will look like this:

setmode a/ab/abc9d/.forward +h setmode a/ab/abc9d/.pinerc +h setmode d/de/def8g/.forward +h ... etc.

Then I can run smbclient like this:

smbclient //filer/home -U root < command-file

I get prompted for the password once and then smbclient sets all the DOS hidden bits.

For the curious, we are authenticating CIFS users with a unix NIS database, so all of our volumes have unix permissions. You must authenticate with a domain controller if you want NT or mixed style permissions.

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

University of Virginia ITC Unix Support