toolforger
Explorer
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2017
- Messages
- 60
My use case is a home office with Linux and Windows clients that do their backups to FreeNAS.
Situation 1: Windows client has a directory structure where pathnames go close to the 260 character limit. Windows client tries to copy stuff to FreeNAS. FreeNAS means UNC paths, which means C:\xxx becomes \\freenas.local\username\xxx which is ~20 characters longer. So even if the backup works, the user will have his Windows Explorer fail when trying to copy that file (because that one needs to be restored).
Situation 2: Linux limits pathnames to 4096 (in theory, in practice it depends on the filesystem, which means the actual limit can be even higher or much lower).
Now if I happen to have a really deeply nested directory structure, that won't backup to FreeNAS.
In this case, the path of least resistance is probably telling Linux that it shouldn't allow longer filenames. Or warn me about them if they happen - however I'd like the warning within a minute or so, because if I do an hourly backup I don't want that file to miss it just because I forgot to shorten a directory name. I could do a cron job, but I'd like the output on the systray, not in a mail to the root user which may be sitting in my inbox for hours.
Well, obviously my understanding of the Linux case is somewhat incoherent, so any good concepts are very much welcome.
What do you people do?
Situation 1: Windows client has a directory structure where pathnames go close to the 260 character limit. Windows client tries to copy stuff to FreeNAS. FreeNAS means UNC paths, which means C:\xxx becomes \\freenas.local\username\xxx which is ~20 characters longer. So even if the backup works, the user will have his Windows Explorer fail when trying to copy that file (because that one needs to be restored).
Situation 2: Linux limits pathnames to 4096 (in theory, in practice it depends on the filesystem, which means the actual limit can be even higher or much lower).
Now if I happen to have a really deeply nested directory structure, that won't backup to FreeNAS.
In this case, the path of least resistance is probably telling Linux that it shouldn't allow longer filenames. Or warn me about them if they happen - however I'd like the warning within a minute or so, because if I do an hourly backup I don't want that file to miss it just because I forgot to shorten a directory name. I could do a cron job, but I'd like the output on the systray, not in a mail to the root user which may be sitting in my inbox for hours.
Well, obviously my understanding of the Linux case is somewhat incoherent, so any good concepts are very much welcome.
What do you people do?