[gpfsug-discuss] Intro, and Spectrum Archive self-service recall interface question

[Jonathan Buzzard]

On Mon, 2019-05-20 at 20:33 +0000, Christof Schmitt wrote:
> SMB clients know the state of the files through a OFFLINE bit that is
> part of the metadata that is available through the SMB protocol. The
> Windows Explorer in particular honors this bit and avoids reading
> file data for previews, but the MacOS Finder seems to ignore it and
> read file data for previews anyway, triggering recalls.
>  
> The best way would be fixing this on the Mac clients to simply not
> read file data for previews for OFFLINE files. So far requests to
> Apple support to implement this behavior were unsuccessful, but it
> might still be worthwhile to keep pushing this request.
>  

In the interim would it be possible for the SMB server to detect the
client OS and only allow recalls from say Windows. At least this would
be in "our" control unlike getting Apple to change the finder.app
behaviour. Then tell MacOS users to use Windows if they want to recall
files and pin the blame squarely on Apple to your users.

I note that Linux is no better at honouring the offline bit in the SMB
protocol than MacOS. Oh the irony of Windows being the only main stream
IS handling HSM'ed files properly!

JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                         Tel: +44141-5483420
HPC System Administrator, ARCHIE-WeSt.
University of Strathclyde, John Anderson Building, Glasgow. G4 0NG