Apple resource forks, anyone tested this in real life?

[plq]

Some time ago Nathan Gray tested how much of the Apple filesystem was actually captured with various backup tools. Of particular interest was the Apple resource fork, a way to store information relating in one way or another to the file.

However, moving a HFS+ file to a different file system, such as ZFS on FreeNAS is no guarantee that all the 'extra' information is preserved in the transfer (could be as simple as that the other file system has no room for the construct in its architecture).

The test suite and methodology originally published by Nathan Gray (see this link: http://www.n8gray.org/code/backup-bouncer/) has later been elaborated on by Mike Bombich (see this link: http://www.bombich.com/groups/ccc/wiki/7ba51/).

My question is: Has anyone (vastly more talented than me) run these test suites together with FreeNas?

Are Apple and ZFS/FreeNAS users really missing anything, or is there something we should avoid, etc?

 

[louisk]

I've been storing things on my FreeNAS for years and haven't had any problems. I've used both AFP and SMB/CIFS. No issues.

What problems are you having?

 

[plq]

No acute problems, but in order to know that there is nothing lost, I would be most interested in seeing the results of this kind of review.

If you look at what Mike Bombich has done, he is using it to ensure that his software (CarbonCloner) does not miss any particular features
of the file structure when backups are made. However, his testing as I understand it is done between HFS+ volumes, where both the original
and target are on the same structure.

When a copy/transfer is made between HFS+ and ZFS, it is no longer certain that everything (every attribute, resource forks etc) has a place
on the target architecture, and will thus be lost when it is copies back.

This is the situation that the test suite is meant for. But in order to run it, more skills in using source code, compiler linkers etc is needed
than I know of.

A thorough analysis can also help in some of the issues that i see here from time to time.