Mac Folders shared, SMB problems

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ktwdallas

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Okay, I'm kind of confused and hoping for some help. I have two machines in the office, a Mac and an XP Windows Machine. We had Tiger installed, have a huge library of folders on an internal drive on the Mac that was shared (via Sharepoints) so the Windows machine could log on with their own account.

We have since upgraded to Leopard. The XP machine can still connect, but any of the folder names created on the Mac since the Leopard upgrade get converted into screwy short names. For example, the folder name "160 801-528 Beatty st." is viewed on the Windows machine as "13KUZW~7".

I know normally things like this are related to very long file or folder names, but this name is only 22 characters. And as I said, any folders that were created on Tiger still show up even if they're longer (such as "467 TH1-1420 Strathmore Mews").

Attempting to go into the short foldername from the Windows machine results in an error message "\\server\path\13KUZW~7 refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location."
 
You are looking at the temp folder. Typically the temp folders are not shared, so even if Windows says "13KUZW~7" the folder you want is "160 801-528 Beatty st.", with its full path, and the correct folder set to be shared.
 
But that's all that's showing.. I've pasted two screenshots below, what it looks like on the Mac and what it looks like through XP.. the one correct folder is one that was created on Tiger.. the other three are new.

mac.jpg

winxp.jpg
 
See what would happen if you re-named one of the folders with a simple one word name. I am wondering if the way name characters are displayed in Leopard is different to Windows XP.
 
That does work. I renamed a folder just with a number, like 567 and it appears correctly in XP. We've had to do that as a workaround but long term the full address info for the folder name is important.
 
Okay, apparently the problem was that if the folder name ended in a period or ended with a space, that's causing the filename to screw up. Since we copy addresses out of our database, they frequently were ending with "St." and Samba's not liking that too much (or a whitespace character at the end).
 
ktwdallas said:
Okay, apparently the problem was that if the folder name ended in a period or ended with a space, that's causing the filename to screw up. Since we copy addresses out of our database, they frequently were ending with "St." and Samba's not liking that too much (or a whitespace character at the end).
Click to expand...

Maybe you should write a bug report to Apple at Apple FeedBack. Some engineer might take notice.
 
I have been struggling with the same problem since the first version of leopard server. I am currently looking into the SMB protocol as the culprit. Windows XP will automatically remove any spaces accidentally placed at the end of file names or folder names. I have written to Apple multiple times of this problem and have submitted many reports to Apple's development teams. So far there has been no cure the problem. A Band-Aid approach is to create an AppleScript or possibly Automator to remove the extra spaces from within the folders (shared points on server) then create a cron which will automatically fire off the Automator to remove the spaces. This can be performed on the hourly basis. Unfortunately it's not a fix is just a workaround. As someone else on the Mac and creates a file or folder with a space at the end you'll have to wait one hour for the problem to be corrected by the AppleScript.

I wish there was an easier way and Apple programmers would fix the problem. And you are correct Tiger server did not have this problem it only appeared in leopard.

If you found a solution to the problem please let me know I'm curious to see how others are working around this problem.
 
Today was the first time I ran into the problem of folders on our 10.5.5 leopard OS X server causing problems for XP users. Folder names look like CIJ4J~4
to XP users if there is a space at the end of a folder on the server.

Your not alone.
 
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