We are using our netapps for home directories in a mixed NFS and CIFS environment. We have a prototype new user directory that we set up with some unix "dot" files, a public_html directory, etc. Most of our CIFS users never touch unix, so from CIFS we make the unix dot files hidden. We do this in the hope that they won't delete them and then later on give unix a try and have problems when their account doesn't behave as documented.

We use the netapp dump program to dump the prototype directory to a disk file. We create new accounts from unix. We make a new user directory and populate it with netapp restore. Then we chown all the files to the new user. This works great because it preserves the "hidden" attribute on all the "dot" files. Unfortunately, the netapp dump utility writes all the inode information for the entire filesystem to the dump file. So our little prototype directory, which tars into a file of about 20K, dumps into a 2.5M file. This really slows down bulk user adds, because it takes several seconds for each restore to run. Not a surprise when you have to rsh over 2.5M. We added 4700 accounts for our new incoming students and it took about a day -- almost all of the time taken up by restore. And yes, we dump once to file, and do multiple restores from it.

I suppose I could build a very small and empty netapp filesystem and put the prototype in there and dump it. That would certainly reduce the size of the dump, but that's an impractial waste of resources.

So here are my questions:

1) Is there some way other than dump/restore to copy a directory on a netapp that preserves all NFS and CIFS attributes?

2) We are running 5.2.2P1 and I don't see any dump flags that avoid including all the inode info in the dump. Am I missing something?

3) Is there a way from unix to set the CIFS hidden attribute? If so, I would just use tar and set the attribute.

Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 804-924-0640

University of Virginia ITC Unix Support