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Re: Filesystem metadata support


On Mar 13, 2007, at 1:13 PM, Dan Shoop wrote:

At 10:09 PM -0700 3/11/07, Jesse Peterson wrote:
Well, "Finder" metadata (which I've seen referred to as "Finder info", too) is essentially the metadata available via the SetFile/ GetFile tools.

Oh really? I'm not sure how anyone could make that determination. Finder metadata would be data relevant to the Finder which is a superset of that available in Finder Info or through the SetFile/ GetFile tools... and some of that data is POSIX metadata so how does that jive?

Yes, you're right. Doing more research to plug into the wiki page I see that now. I had some misconceptions. The conceptual grouping of all the metadata associated with the getattrlist (and related) system calls is what I was calling "Finder info" (based off some other research and code I had looked into). Apple appears to call all of this "file system attributes."


For non-definitive yes/no cells I suppose there'd be a short description or perhaps a footnote (as some of the existing exceptions). In the same way versions could be noted, too (as above).

I was optimistic for the listings, however. For example you have to specifically configure a Bacula option in your file set before it will pick up the resource forks and is easy to miss.

 I think what people really need to see is an enumeration of each
 specific metadatum.

This makes great sense and in fact I considered doing that first or as a follow-up. I think I hit the major ones, though (metadatums, that is :).

A datum is a singular piece of data. There are no "datums" it's data. 

Yes.

If I started that page (or amend this one) would you contribute what you know?

Why not just cull the already available stuff I've written or that written from others?

Excellent, would you point me in the direction of specific write-ups? Google is giving me mostly mailing list and forum messages from yourself. I saw a MacTech article that doesn't appear to be publicly accessible. But, in the spirit of a wiki and that you clearly know what and who these sources are: feel free to edit the page!


> As we've seen reported over and over most so 
 called Mac sysadmins firmly believe that their copy mechanism of
 choice is working just fine, which is obviously NOT the case. ;)

There is probably no tool short of a sector-level copy (dd) that can perfectly capture everything :).

dd specifically only copies data. It does not copy metadata.

While metadata is a type of data we'll skip the semantic confusion and I'll say that I what I meant was that if you copy sectors of a disk (ie, all the sectors of a disk on which a filesystem resides) containing a filesystem to another place, all of the data and metadata of that filesystem (and thus, files, and file metadata) is copied with it. Obviously just copying a file's contents with dd will get nothing more than the file's contents.


And yes there is a tool that perfectly copies all data and metadata. Probably more than one.

Well, depending on your definition of metadata, sure. But then we're getting into semantics again and I think I know what you mean here.
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References: 
 >Filesystem metadata support (From: Jesse Peterson <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Filesystem metadata support (From: Dan Shoop <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Filesystem metadata support (From: Jesse Peterson <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Filesystem metadata support (From: Dan Shoop <email@hidden>)



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