Files and directories starting with period invisible under Windows

[johnwbyrd]

Dear [first_name],

If you are using TrueNAS 12.0, and you have a Samba share set up, and you try to copy a directory or a file starting with a period onto TrueNAS, the file and/or directory will magically DISAPPEAR! POOOOF!

To work around this goofiness, click on Sharing > Windows Shares (SMB) > Edit (on the share you want to fix) .

Click the Advanced Options button.

Add the following to the Auxiliary Parameters pane:

hide dot files = no

Restart the SMB service by going to Services > SMB and turning the service to the Not running position, then to the Running position.

Voila, which is French for your share is working as it ought to now.

This is a recording. [beep]

 

[Jailer]

In the "nix' world a file or directory that starts with a period is hidden. Not being able to see it is expected behavior.

 

[anodos]

You can also change File Explorer's settings to show hidden files.

 

[johnwbyrd]

In the "nix' world a file or directory that starts with a period is hidden. Not being able to see it is expected behavior.

Not from a Windows machine or within the SMB protocol, no it's not.

 

[johnwbyrd]

You can also change File Explorer's settings to show hidden files.

You can also fix TrueNAS's shipping smb.conf to do the right thing by default, so this will no longer be a bug.

 

[anodos]

You can also fix TrueNAS's shipping smb.conf to do the right thing by default, so this will no longer be a bug.

smb.conf

>Default: hide dot files = yes

By definition we're doing the right thing (we don't change the default behavior for samba). You can feel free to bring up the issue of default behavior on the samba mailing list though. https://www.samba.org/samba/archives.html

 

[Jailer]

Not from a Windows machine or within the SMB protocol, no it's not.

Not everything operates from within a Windows world. Thankfully.

 

[anodos]

The "hidden" property only impacts applications that choose to pay attention to it. Ultimately it has no functional impact. Generally speaking, in today's world where you may have Linux, MacOS, and Windows clients all simultaneously using an SMB share, you expect certain compromises to make the server behave as expected from the various operating systems / users. We can think of it as being "culturally sensitive". :)

 

[johnwbyrd]

I deleted TrueNAS and installed Ubuntu as per https://ubuntu-nas.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html. The result has been extremely stable so far -- none of the weird GUI crashes of TrueNAS.

If I'm going to be editing smb.conf anyway, might as well do it as root.

I appreciate the opportunity to view the state of TrueNAS anyway.