OS X Lion bug may affect Windows file sharing

A bug has been discovered in OS X Lion Server that appears when a user tries to share a file with extended attributes with a Windows XP or Windows 7 system. The bug was first discovered by Steve Maser, a senior systems administrator at the University of Michigan's Office of Technology Transfer. In a message posted to the OS X Server list, Maser details the bug:

"If a file/folder on your 10.7.x Mac (and this includes Mac OS X Server) has some specific (?) extended attributes on it and you do Windows Sharing for Windows users to access the file/folders -- you won't be able to pull the file down to your Windows desktop. I verified this with Windows 7." The bug has also been verified with Windows XP.

According to Steve, the copy process appears to begin, before halting with an error message like, "the file name you specified is not valid or too long," or less frequently, an "Invalid MS-DOS Function" message.

Maser also notes a workaround he devised. It's not a fix but it will allow for a file to be copied by removing the attributes from the file's metadata. Apple hasn't acknowledged the bug yet, but per Masers posting, they now know about it and and fix should be added to OS X Lion server in the future.

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Source: http://lists.apple.com/archives/macos-x-server/2011/Aug/msg0…

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A bug has been discovered in OS X Lion Server that appears when a user tries to share a file with extended attributes with a Windows...

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drydeniv

Has anyone found a solution to this problem? I can get around it by using GoodSync, or FTP, but it is just annoying to not have access to drag-copy capability... This isn't an issue when copying to a Win 7 machine from the mac, via samba... But trying to copy a folder from mac, on the Win 7 side - always yields the "invalid MS-DOS function" issue.

December 17 2011 at 10:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Alex Thurley

They could also fix Windows 7 domain login:

http://help.apple.com/advancedserveradmin/mac/10.7/#apd52648A71-571A-433C-81A8-2A7792333F22

It simply does not work. Lion Server is no true successor to Snow Leopard Server looking at the amount of features that have been removed or are buggy. Where is the quality management? Retired with the Xserve?

August 31 2011 at 7:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

shaunisadirty

Where are all of these bugs coming from? They didn't even change anything in this release.

August 30 2011 at 5:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Noah Abrahamson

The new SMBX on Lion Server doesn't have a customizable configuration file, like with Samba. We encountered the same problem with Snow Leopard (and Leopard) server a while ago http://bit.ly/pWG7Z3 —not only can we not tell Lion to ignore the problematic attributes and streams, we can't specify an external Kerberos realm, which we could with 10.5 and 10.6, so it's either AD or OD or nothing at all. Good job with your investigation, Steve!

August 30 2011 at 3:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply