derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) (11/28/90)
I have noticed that the use of TOPS in our network has caused the appearance of multiple desktop files on user's Macs. These appear as invisible files within various directories. This occurs when a user mounts a portion of a distant workstations file structure. To do this TOPS will build a desktop in whatever folder (directory) is being mounted. This is why read only directories cannot be mounted and will return a TOPS error message. MY QUESTION: Are multiple desktop files a bad thing? Which file would get updated when a file is created/moved/deleted? All of them? Can this cause file corruption? -- = John DeRosa, Motorola, Inc, Cellular Infrastructure Group = = e-mail: ...uunet!motcid!derosaj, motcid!derosaj@uunet.uu.net = = Applelink: N1111 = =I do not hold by employer responsible for any information in this message =
ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (12/03/90)
The Finder will only create one Desktop file per volume, and it always creates it at the root of the volume. Those extra Desktop files you see appear because those folders appear as volumes on the machines which mount them. The Finder on the Mac that is publishing those folders will never make use of those extra Desktop files. The potential for inconsistencies arises because those multiple desktop databases may contain information about the same files. For example, if the published folder contains an application, then there will be an entry for that application in two desktop databases, one created by the machine publishing the folder, and one by the machine mounting it. If one user trashes the application, the other database may not be correctly updated. I don't think these inconsistencies are a big problem. The Finder seems robust enough to handle all kinds of odd situations like this. In short, I wouldn't worry about it. The one situation that worries me at all is the one where you publish an entire volume. In this case, the Finder on the machine which mounts the volume would (it would appear) end up using the same Desktop file as the one on the publishing machine. I'm not sure how TOPS handles this. Anybody else care to comment? Lawrence D'Oliveiro fone: +64-71-562-889 Computer Services Dept fax: +64-71-384-066 University of Waikato electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz Hamilton, New Zealand 37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00
Bruce.Hoult@bbs.actrix.gen.nz (12/04/90)
In article <2419.275a1e33@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes: > The one situation that worries me at all is the one where you > publish an entire volume. In this case, the Finder on the machine > which mounts the volume would (it would appear) end up using the > same Desktop file as the one on the publishing machine. I'm not > sure how TOPS handles this. > > Anybody else care to comment? TOPS only allows one machine at a time to access the desktop file. The other machine(s) act the same way as if th desktop file were on a locked disk -- i.e. they don't record folder and icon changes. If the server machine is running MultiFinder then *it* will always retain control of its own desktop file, because the Finder always has it open. If the server machine is not running MF (running uniFinder -- yeeech) then it can lose control of its desktop file if the followng sequence occurs: server and client are both running apps client quits to finder which opens server's desktop file server quits to finder which can't open desktop file -- Bruce.Hoult@bbs.actrix.gen.nz Twisted pair: +64 4 772 116 BIX: brucehoult Last Resort: PO Box 4145 Wellington, NZ