Unable to browse snapshot directory via AFP

[Pete248]

I can navigate to the .zfs folder and display the content:

ls -al
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x 1 peter staff 264 6 Sep 12:48 .
drwx------ 1 peter staff 264 6 Sep 14:50 ..
dr-xr-xr-x 1 peter staff 264 6 Sep 12:48 shares
dr-xr-xr-x 1 peter staff 264 6 Sep 12:48 snapshot

then go inside the snapshot folder:

cd snapshot

and display the content:

ls -al
ls: manual-20120906: Is a directory
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x 1 peter staff 264 6 Sep 12:48 .
dr-xr-xr-x 1 peter staff 264 6 Sep 12:48 ..


Weird "manual-20120906: Is a directory" message, which I get as well with the following commands:

ls -al manual-20120906
ls: manual-20120906: Is a directory


cd manual-20120906
-bash: cd: manual-20120906: Is a directory


So I do not get the content of the snapshot "manual-20120906"


If I access the server via NFS, I have no problems to access the content of the snapshot.


Does anyone know of a workaround?

Thanks

Pete

 

[Pete248]

Answering my own question in the hope, other's might benefit ...

You have to set the snapshot folder to visible with
zfs set snapdir=visible path-to-your-dataset
path-to-your-dataset is what you see in the column Volume/Dataset under storage.

The snapshot folder is still invisible on you Mac via AFP.

You can open it via "Goto folder ..." and enter
/Volumes/Name-of-your-AFP-share/.zfs/snapshot
Drag the folder icon in the title bar to your sidebar, then you have easy access to the snapshot folder in the future.

Hopefully someone creates an app to search and browse the snapshots similar to the Time Machine client. The structure of the ZFS snapshot folder is very similar to the structure of a Time Machine backup folder so any 3rd party app, which works with Time Machine backups (i.e. Back-in-Time), could work with ZFS snapshot with just a few tweaks.

Pete