OS X and Windows Servers

[compuveg]

I'm having weird problems with the Macs on my networktrying simple file/folder operations. Here's the situation.

In the share they're attached to, they've got a few levels of folders, all legally named. They want to rename one of the folders, but the server tells them they don't have permissions. From the windows side, I can't rename them either. I check and they've got file locks on those dreaded '._'-prefixed "resource fork" files, which are down inside the folder we want to rename.

Easy fix, we close all apps, close all finder windows and check it again. The file locks are still there. We totally detach from the share, and they go away, to be instantaneously replaced by fewer, but some of the same, locks from another Mac User. He closes the share and they go away.

I log her back in, and the same locks show up, and prevent us from renaming the folder. I log her out, rename them from another machine, and log her back in. Now she can rename them without a problem.

What could be causing this?

We've got Windows 2003 servers, and the Macs are a mix of 10.3 and 10.5, with most migrating to 10.5 soon. All fairly straightforward setups.

 

[fizzak]

Have your users mount windows shares as smb://"server IP" instead.

Windows and AFP do not get along contrary to what Apple says.

The files your users have saved under afp are likely to stay messed up. Use SMB:// from now on will stop the issue in the future.

 

[compuveg]

That's how we connect already. They used to use AFP but I've found that Macs emulate windows clients better than windows servers emulate Mac Servers, so that's what we do.

In some cases I've found it necessary to actually connect using

smb://username@servername:sharename

At least I believe that's for format I used. It is probably something 'goofy' with his keychain or something.

In finding that bug though, I found a good way to prevent that nasty 'share selection' dialog is to make favorites in the connect to server list for each share.