The information is passed to the backup program using a technique involving OS/2-style extended attributes. When these are restored, the filer does the "right thing" to restore the correct permissions. This technique also correctly backs up and restores all UNIX filesystem objects, including block/char special device files, symbolic links, hard links, etc. This (patent-pending) feature has been available since ONTAP version 5.1.

I'm not sure where, but this should be documented in the system guide somewhere.

Mark Muhlestein -- mmm@netapp.com -- netapp engineering

-----Original Message----- From: Karl Erik Øyøygard [mailto:karl@proact.no] Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 3:46 PM To: 'Benn, Paul'; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Backups of both NFS and CIFS Directories

Paul, others,

I still don't get it!

How can a CIFS-client (without SecureShare) see the UNIX-permissions on files on a filer? And especially, how do files restored by a CIFS-client get UNIX-style permissions?

I've tested it, and I can see that it actually works, but I'm not confident that I can recommend this to my customers... Is this dependent on the OS version on the filer or the client backing it up?

Is there any technical doc on these 'magical' permissions that aren't seen by the client backing them up, but still restored correctly?

Regards,

Karl Erik

-----Opprinnelig melding----- Fra: Benn, Paul [SMTP:paul.benn@netapp.com] Sendt: 19. januar 2001 00:12 Til: 'glennc@informix.com'; toasters@mathworks.com Emne: RE: Backups of both NFS and CIFS Directories

Glenn,

To retain both permission styles you'll need to backup using the local dump command, an NDMP enabled backup application or backup over CIFS. Backing up over NFS will not retain NTFS file permissions or DOS attributes.

If you back up over CIFS, not only are the UNIX and NT file permissions retained but we also backup the DOS file attributes and track an archive bit for files with UNIX-style permissions. If backing up over CIFS is your plan, have a look at our white paper on this subject:

http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3052.html

Regards,

Paul Benn Network Appliance