My SyncBackSE has been producing errors lately when trying to copy files that begin with a period to my unRAID server.  SyncBack knowledge base reports this can happen when copying to certain NAS's, so we can add unRAID to that list.  After a little research, I now understand that Linux handles files with initial periods in special ways.

 

Is there a workaround, or a Samba configuration tweak?  Or do I just live with it?

 

Samba is handling them properly... it is Windows that is not displaying them.

 

You fix this in Windows. 

 

Go to folder options in My Comptuer, select the "View" tab, and

  uncheck "Hide protected and operating system files" and

  select the radio button "Show hidden files"

 

Either apply to all folders, or do it in each appropriate folder of the unRAID file structure.

Thank you for responding.  I do have those settings, probably some of the first changes I make on any system I handle.

 

A little additional data, when using my file manager (TotalCommander), I am unable to change the Hidden flag on the 'dotty' file on the unRAID server, something I normally have no problem doing.  I also cannot overwrite the file, but I CAN delete it, and then copy the file from my XP station to unRAID.  So apparently, SyncBackSE can copy it there the first time, but is unable to update it when it has changed on the XP.  I guess for now, if I see SyncBack reporting an error with a file like this (eg. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\.autoreg), I'll manually delete it from unRAID, and that should allow SyncBack to perform correctly on its next run.  I have 3 files like this, and they don't change often.

 

This sync/copy/backup operation works correctly for all files to a local or networked drive, but not to an unRAID drive if the filename begins with a period, and the file already exists.

 

Files with a leading '.' are hidden from most commands in Linux (ls, rm, etc) unless you explicitly include them.  Samba reports such files to DOS/Windows as "hidden" which is the expected operation.  Since the hidden attribute is based on the file name, and not on some actual attribute, you can't change it -- you have to change the name.

 

The software you are using apparently is tripping up on the hidden attributed file that it can't remove the hidden attribute from.  IIRC some versions of DOS treat a hidden file as also read-only, even though the read-only attribute is not set.

 

You can try "hide dot files = no" on your samba config, then shutdown samba and restart it.

No success here, but that may be lack of Linux experience.

 

I appended "hide dot files = no" (with and without a leading tab) to /etc/samba/smb.conf and restarted samba, but with no improvement in handling a leading period filename.  I also created a .test file, but could not list it without 'ls -lA', so I may have done something wrong...

 

I used these 2 lines to restart samba, successfully:

killall -w smbd nmbd

/root/samba start

 

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'll live with it.