do macs really handle files in the gigabyte range a lot better than pcs?

[drag]

Here's were I got confused.
one spot

._filename are called resource files. Types, creation dates, etc etc. Normal OSes 😛 don't have this stuff embedded into the file itself like Mac's do (at least to the extent that Mac's do)

.DS_Store, this is were the icon and position stuff gets put. This gets created by the finder each and every time you visit a writable share. You delete them, they get put right back. So if you find these guys you know there is a Mac lurking around somewhere.


From here, this is why Apple stuff can be a pain

HFS stores meta data, e.g. Finder and Resource information on HFS within one file, but standard UNIX applications can only see the data part, the additional information (e.g. resource file, creation and backup date, file comments, type & creator, hidden flags, etc.) gets lost using standard UNIX-based tools, such as "cp", "cpio", "tar", "dump", "pax", "cat", "dd", etc. This means that the copies will be incomplete and many files will just refuse to work. For example, booting will not work, previews from EPSF files are missing, applications will not detect their own files anymore, etc.

HFS-compatible applications can deal with the additional resource and Finder information but they do not understand UNIX special files, e.g. device files, hard links, symbolic links, file and directory permissions, etc.

(of course that's from a site trying to sell you something.)

from here

UFS has the notion of a "hard link" (i.e., a duplicate directory
entry somewhere in the same file system, typically for a file).
A key characteristic of hard links is that the modes and contents
of the file are shared by the link (because all directory entries
for a file point to the same inode).

I have tried creating hard links on an HFS+ file system and they
work (mostly) as expected. I did find a peculiarity, however:

% touch foo
% ln foo foolink
# Using Get Info, set the comment for "foo".
# Using Get Info, get the comment for "foolink".

The comment, being stored in the .DS_Store file of foo's directory,
does not automatically get used for foolink.

I'd like to know whether any of the other HFS+ file attributes are
unique to the file, as opposed to being shared by all hard links to
the file.

What fun! 😛 (now this explains to me some difficulties I had trying to make bash scripts interact with apple scripts)

It's not a big deal, it's just one of the few gripes I have with OS X. The other grip is the mangling of the traditionally clean Unix directory system.

 

[rjain]

Originally posted by: drag

Like I said, Mac's do file stuff weird, I'll see if I can find some links.

Just like unices do file stuff weird. All those permissions and device files. How could they design a filesystem that wasn't compaible with FAT?

 

[rjain]

Originally posted by: drag

._filename are called resource files. Types, creation dates, etc etc. Normal OSes 😛 don't have this stuff embedded into the file itself like Mac's do (at least to the extent that Mac's do)

Types and creation dates are metadata, not resource data. Unix has an even more complex system of EAs.

.DS_Store, this is were the icon and position stuff gets put. This gets created by the finder each and every time you visit a writable share. You delete them, they get put right back. So if you find these guys you know there is a Mac lurking around somewhere.

Again, ever used umsdos?

From here, this is why Apple stuff can be a pain

HFS stores meta data, e.g. Finder and Resource information on HFS within one file, but standard UNIX applications can only see the data part, the additional information (e.g. resource file, creation and backup date, file comments, type & creator, hidden flags, etc.) gets lost using standard UNIX-based tools, such as "cp", "cpio", "tar", "dump", "pax", "cat", "dd", etc. This means that the copies will be incomplete and many files will just refuse to work. For example, booting will not work, previews from EPSF files are missing, applications will not detect their own files anymore, etc.

HFS-compatible applications can deal with the additional resource and Finder information but they do not understand UNIX special files, e.g. device files, hard links, symbolic links, file and directory permissions, etc.

So what? those tools lose EAs, too. Does that mean that XFS is "bad"? Windows doesn't understand special files. Does that make it "bad"?

% touch foo
% ln foo foolink
# Using Get Info, set the comment for "foo".
# Using Get Info, get the comment for "foolink".

The comment, being stored in the .DS_Store file of foo's directory,
does not automatically get used for foolink.

I'd like to know whether any of the other HFS+ file attributes are
unique to the file, as opposed to being shared by all hard links to
the file.

What fun! 😛 (now this explains to me some difficulties I had trying to make bash scripts interact with apple scripts)

It's not a big deal, it's just one of the few gripes I have with OS X. The other grip is the mangling of the traditionally clean Unix directory system.

Then gripe about XFS, too. And the ext2/ext3 in kernel 2.6. EAs are just as "wacky" as any other crap you're complaining about. So are file permissions, for that matter. They're not supported everywhere, so should we remove support from them everywhere?

 

[drag]

Nothing of the sort.

Like I said, it's not a big deal. It's just one weak point in the design of Apple's stuff.

I mean when I file share with windows, BSD, and Linux, they don't go around randomly writing crap to other people's harddrive do they?

Why base something off of Unix and then make it subtly incompatable with every other OS based on it?

I am not exactly griping about it, I know every different version of the same thing has idocicansies, but you have to admit it's annoying, don't you?

Personally I'd rather be dealing with a bunch of OS X desktops rather then a bunch of Windows ones any time.

 

[rjain]

Mac OS X is not exactly based off Unix. It's more like the Mac OS ported to a Unix kernel. Again, have you used umsdos? Have you tried sharing a file with permissions via samba to a Win 9x client? Have you tried setting EAs on a file from a Win 9x client? Just because OS X allows you to use a non-Mac-like FS and not lose most of the features of a Mac-like FS doesn't make it "weak". That's like saying that the fact that samba loses permissions information is a "strength".

 

[drag]

Who said it was weak because they use freakish file types? It's just a left over from earlier OSes and apple would be wise, IMO, to get something better.

And I've used umsdos, and given a choice I wouldn't of. It's a kinda of stop-gap thing and is not designed for performance or stability. It's not something I would use for a video editing machine! 😛

Given a choice I would choose compatablity over speed or convience. HFS sacrifices both speed and compatability for convience. So, what? It's not a big deal and is a design choice, It's what makes Apple Apple and reflects the target audience.

The strength of Samba comes from the fact that it works, and works well. It's compatable and works to make a wide veriaty of OSes work well together, including Macs.

As far as OS X based off of Unix. It is to a certain extent. Darwin is a version of BSD and it uses the Mac kernel. And BSD is about as true Unix as your going to get, (copyrights set aside.) On top of it runs OS X's gui stuff. It's one of the major selling point of the OS.

In peoples mind Unix design = stability, power, flexability, portability. So OS X should also show quite a bit of a improvement over the older Mac OSes were much of those unix personality aspects were lacking. And it does, by a long shot.

Actually if you want to look at Apples history, they've had a long time flurtation with Unix, but interestingly it wasn't until they started using open source products they were able to pull it off. Remember when Steve Jobs got fired from Apple??

After that Steve started Next Inc. His Next Step OS (started selling in 1989) was based off of Unix. To bad after they realised they couldn't sell enough hardware and ported it all over to x86. Could of been something nice if they could of competed against Microsoft. 🙁 (probably this fact that they faile with Unix-based OS vs Microsoft is one of a veriaty of reasons why we won't see OS X on x86)

And after a few years of trying to drive Apple into the ground they(apple) got smart and bought out Next and brought back Jobs into the company. The next thing to happen was they were working on Rapsody, another Unix-based OS in 1997. That was back before OS 8. Still couldn't quite pull it off, but when they started Darwin project in 1999 it gave them the developement base to give us OS X.

All in all I understand why the Apple HFS files do the thing they do (the Cocoa legacy API stuff from Raspsody and to make it easier to port stuff, and Carbon -- all the new stuff.), it would be nice not to have it's behavior with network file sharing, but you can't have everything, can you? 🙂

 

[rjain]

Originally posted by: drag
Who said it was weak because they use freakish file types? It's just a left over from earlier OSes and apple would be wise, IMO, to get something better.

Yeah, device files are freakish file types. They are just left over from earlier OSes and linux would be wise, IMO, to get something better.

 

[Nothinman]

Device files are nice, something that autocreates them and manages major and minor numbers like devfs would be a nice compliment but otherwise I think they should stay.

 

[drag]

OS X has /dev/ files, too. Even if they are freakish they are still usefull. 🙂

 

[zephyrprime]

IMO the filing system that Mac's use (HFS+) is one of the weak points of the architecture. It's kinda akward and easily damaged and uses all that weird two part meta-data + file data crap the Apples use. And journalling slows it down

Actually, I think that Mac's two part meta-data + file data is the one strength of the Mac file system. It's super useful for holding icons and descriptions for files. On XP, where there is no such thing, browsing is greatly slowed down because windows goes to each file to see if it has an icon in it.

 

[Nothinman]

Actually, I think that Mac's two part meta-data + file data is the one strength of the Mac file system. It's super useful for holding icons and descriptions for files. On XP, where there is no such thing, browsing is greatly slowed down because windows goes to each file to see if it has an icon in it.

It's a pain because it's not easily stored on any other system. FTP a file and lose the meta-data, SMB a file and lose the meta-data, zip a file and lose the meta-data, etc. And on Mac the meta-data stream has to be opened during browsing to look for icons and things, so the fact that XP has to open executables looking for icons doesn't have any real impact on speed because both operations are going to be almost exactly the same performance wise.

 

[rjain]

device files aren't easily stored on any other system either. The meta-data stream is part of the directory in most FSes. I don't know about HFS specifically. However, ALL filesystems MUST have meta-data and data, or else they wouldn't be any use.

 

[Nothinman]

But how often do you want to copy device files? IME never, any OS that supports them also has a way to create them easily.

I know, I was using 'meta-data' to mean the seperate data steam containing the icon, associated app, etc on Macs.

 

[CQuinn]

Slightly OT

After that Steve started Next Inc. His Next Step OS (started selling in 1989) was based off of Unix.

IIRC it (the NeXT OS) was based off the Mach Kernel, with an interface derived from Motif.

To bad after they realised they couldn't sell enough hardware and ported it all over to x86.

They couldn't sell the hardware because they priced it too far above competing products, and
wouldn't provide such ubiquitous hardware as a floppy drive in the design.

Could of been something nice if they could of competed against Microsoft. (probably this fact that they faile with Unix-based OS vs Microsoft is one of a veriaty of reasons why we won't see OS X on x86)

They would have had to compete with Apple first. and IMO thats a very minor point on why Apple
won't port OSX to x86.

And after a few years of trying to drive Apple into the ground they(apple) got smart and bought out Next and brought back Jobs into the company.

That was under Spindler, John Sculley (who took over for Jobs) actually did some good for the company during his tenure (the Newton, and IIRC the Macintosh educational programs). Jobs was originally
ousted because he got caught up in too many pet projects and keeping some good product ideas from
getting out to market.

The next thing to happen was they were working on Rapsody, another Unix-based OS in 1997. That was back before OS 8. Still couldn't quite pull it off, but when they started Darwin project in 1999 it gave them the developement base to give us OS X.

You forget about Copeland and Pink, two previous (failed) efforts to develop a next-gen OS for the
Mac platform.


For a bit of nostalgia

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: CQuinn
Slightly OT

After that Steve started Next Inc. His Next Step OS (started selling in 1989) was based off of Unix.

IIRC it (the NeXT OS) was based off the Mach Kernel, with an interface derived from Motif.

Your confusing the unix operating system design with the kernel. There are hundreds of Unix kernels, Mach is just one potential kernel design of many. For example BSD is a unix kernel. The confusion comes from the copyrights that many companies hold over the name "UNIX", usually people differenciate between Unix (proper legal title) and unix (reality, and design) by capitolization. It's a lot like people use to call Broncos, Scouts, Blazers, WW2 4x4's (etc etc) "jeeps" because they were small offroad vehicles, but you can't call that anymore in commercial lituature because Chrystler has copyrighted the name "Jeep" and will sue you. Unix in the proper legal term refers to System-V style OSes. check here for details

To bad after they realised they couldn't sell enough hardware and ported it all over to x86.

They couldn't sell the hardware because they priced it too far above competing products, and
wouldn't provide such ubiquitous hardware as a floppy drive in the design.

Sure, NextStep went the way of BeOS and OS/2. You just can't make a commercial OS and sell it basis on that alone. You'd have to charge people a thousand dollars a copy to cover developement and maintanance costs, which is something that's impossible with MS around. (not nesicarrialy a bad thing). I think it's amusing that have been several attempts to bring unix to the masses. Another entertaining example was MS's Xenix, which was the first OS Bill Gate's ever sold successfully. He stated several time in public anouncements and such that Unix was the future for the average home user, but failed to make it go, so later they came out with NT, which was designed to be a unix-killer.

Could of been something nice if they could of competed against Microsoft. (probably this fact that they faile with Unix-based OS vs Microsoft is one of a veriaty of reasons why we won't see OS X on x86)

They would have had to compete with Apple first. and IMO thats a very minor point on why Apple
won't port OSX to x86.

Which is why is it only one of a veriety of reasons why we won't see OS X on x86.

And after a few years of trying to drive Apple into the ground they(apple) got smart and bought out Next and brought back Jobs into the company.

That was under Spindler, John Sculley (who took over for Jobs) actually did some good for the company during his tenure (the Newton, and IIRC the Macintosh educational programs). Jobs was originally
ousted because he got caught up in too many pet projects and keeping some good product ideas from
getting out to market.

I suppose I can't argue with that, and I don't want to! 🙂

The next thing to happen was they were working on Rapsody, another Unix-based OS in 1997. That was back before OS 8. Still couldn't quite pull it off, but when they started Darwin project in 1999 it gave them the developement base to give us OS X.

You forget about Copeland and Pink, two previous (failed) efforts to develop a next-gen OS for the
Mac platform.


For a bit of nostalgia

I can't forget about something I never knew! Thanks for the link.

 

[rjain]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
But how often do you want to copy device files? IME never, any OS that supports them also has a way to create them easily.

I know, I was using 'meta-data' to mean the seperate data steam containing the icon, associated app, etc on Macs.

Ok, on unix, that metadata is what contains the permissions. Also, it's what contains the ext2-specific flags for immutable, etc. The same arguments you apply to the Mac's creator and type codes can be applied to unix permissions and ext2-specific flags.

 

[Nothinman]

I know what meta-data is, I was simplifying it in purpose. But atleast things like tar on unix retains permissions, does tar on OS X save the creator and type codes?

 

[rjain]

tar is a unix command. creator and type codes aren't unix attributes. Neither are ACLs, EAs, or ext2-specific attributes. Are those features "bad" because of that? Can winzip save and restore unix permissions? This is what we're comparing: a system which supports a feature to a system which doesn't and then you claim that that feautre is bad because it's not universally supported.

 

[CQuinn]

Your confusing the unix operating system design with the kernel...
Unix in the proper legal term refers to System-V style OSes.

My point was that claiming the NeXT OS was based off of UNIX is
equally confusing to the issue, since it was not based off of
System-V or the Berkeley standard. It is important to
keep these distinctions and origins clear, otherwise we
end up in a situation where a company like SCO claims to own the
source code to everyone elses operating systems.

You'd have to charge people a thousand dollars a copy to cover developement
and maintanance costs, which is something that's impossible with MS around.

That didn't seem to hurt the growth of the Amiga. (Of course it was killed
by corporate mismanagement anyway).

Another entertaining example was MS's Xenix, which was the first OS
Bill Gate's ever sold successfully. He stated several time in public
anouncements and such that Unix was the future for the average home user,
but failed to make it go, so later they came out with NT, which was
designed to be a unix-killer.

I don't think you can use "sold" and "successfully" together in that
sentence. 🙂 Xenix sold, but made such a small splash that most people
don't recall it as part of PC history.

What companies state in public is a matter of what they are
trying to market at the time. Becuase Xenix was what they were trying to
get everyone to use at the time, then that was the "future" from the MS POV.
That "future" has changed a couple of times since then, just like it has
for IBM, Oracle, Sun, HP, Xerox, Apple, and several others.

From my recollection NT was an offshoot of the IBM/Microsoft breakup over
OS/2 (the Second Generation PC Operating System). MS took their half of the
codebase and were going to develop the next version of OS/2 beyond 2.x
(which is what IBM had the rights to). Meanwhile they saw that Windows 3.x was
finally the version that was becoming popular with regular PC Users, and
decided to do a branding change - turning the OS/2 3.0 project into the
Windows NT project. WNT was Microsoft's first attempt at bridging the gap
between personal and server-class computing... it wasn't just hyped as a
unix-killer, it was an attempt to bring everything under one OS, similar to
what IBM later proposed with their Workplace OS.

Which is why is it only one of a veriety of reasons why we won't see OS X on x86.

Yeah, we could start a whole forum on that subject alone.

I can't forget about something I never knew! Thanks for the link.

No problem, I just wanted to share that sense of Deja Vu I always get when a
topic like this comes up.

 

[drag]

Xenix was pretty popular for a long time (as far as being just one of many unices out their during the 80's and early 90's can permit), just not for home PC users... Xenix is still around in one form or another, after all it was sold to SCO eventually (after SCO liscenced it's use for many years). After all what did you think those computer systems in McDonalds and Blockbuster were running for all those years? (not to sure if those places in particular, but lots of places ran xenix like that)


From what I understood of the whole OS/2, NT, win3.11 thing was that when apples were beginning to get noticed more and more for having a nice gui so IBM wanted to develop OS/2, but that was taking longer to take off then was expected so then the Idea was that windows 3 was going to give people a good enough reason to stick with x86 until OS/2 could be rolled out effectively. Then NT was going to be the server to compliment OS/2. Of course it didn't work out that way. 🙂

 

[Nothinman]

tar is a unix command. creator and type codes aren't unix attributes. Neither are ACLs, EAs, or ext2-specific attributes.

Yes but tar does save permissions (and the tar man page on Tru64 implies it saves extended attributes by default, I don't have a Solaris box or anything else around to look at but I would assume they have similar OS-specific patches) , just like WinZIP (or WinRAR, it's been a while since I've used either) can save NTFS ACLs and alternate NTFS streams.

Can winzip save and restore unix permissions? This is what we're comparing

Not really, WinZIP doesn't run on unix but tar runs on OS X. Apple adopted a unix system so they should have maintained patches for the utilities to support all their added features, I don't think it's too much to ask that tar preserve them on OS X even if it discards them when I restore the file on Linux.

a system which supports a feature to a system which doesn't and then you claim that that feautre is bad because it's not universally supported.

No, I just think it's a bad feature because I just don't like it.

 

[rjain]

gnu tar doesn't save EAs... actually I noticed some mumblings about it adding that support some time recently or on the near future. How backwards-compatible is that feature? If it's not readable on linux, then what's the point of using that format instead of some proprietary DECHPAQ format? Still, it doesn't save ext2-specific attributes.

winzip can read tar files.

If you don't like the feature, then you have no place to say whether it should be kept or not, as you can simply ignore it and use the system as a normal unix box.

 

[Nothinman]

I never said anything about GNU tar, I mentioned the tar that DEC/HP/Compaq shipped with Tru64 as most commercial vendors are more likely to support their proprietary extensions like Apple should have. It could be readble on Linux and still save the OS X EAs. for all I care they could save the EA info to a .tar.ea file in the archive then have their tar handle that file specially but since it's a normal file in the archive it would just be processed like normal.

I know winzip can read tar files, as can winrar, my point was they were designed for Windows and as such they support the archiving of NTFS ACls and alternate streams.

As for OS X it's not a normal unix, it's NeXt with all that netinfo sh!t all over the place that supercedes the files in multiuser mode but not in single usermode, talk about confusing if you don't know it's there and how to work it.

 

[rjain]

So use stuffit for archiving files on OS X. ext2 attributes are also confusing if you don't know they're there and how to work them. "Why can't I delete this file? I'm root and I'm doing rm -rf!"

 

[Nothinman]

ext2 attributes are also very rare and aren't on any files by default in any distrobution I've seen.