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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Os X Not Seeing Files Os 9 Does

prepressjedi - Aug 20, 2005 - 8:49 am

I work at a newspaper and we have this odd problem that has me totaly stumped. We have a system unique to newspapers for handling photos, basically it is just a volume we look at and wait for photos to show up in. There are times when the editors will send pics and on the os x mac we do pics on we cannot see the files but if we look at the same window on an os 9 mac we can see them fine. There is nothing wrong or different with the files as compared to the ones we can see the rest of the time...I just don get it.

skapp - Aug 20, 2005 - 1:47 pm

By any chance are they prefixing the filenames with a "."? If so, they must stop doing that. The "." causes the file to be invisible in OS X. However, OS 9 does not understand the convention, so the file will be visible in OS 9.

prepressjedi - Aug 21, 2005 - 11:39 am

nope...all the files follow stringent naming conventions. It is an intermittent problem that only occurs with an occasional file, last night it didnt happen at all.

skapp - Aug 21, 2005 - 2:05 pm

OK. I'm not much help then. I've read about this problem before, but the agency was prefixing the filenames with periods, making them invisible on any Unix/Linux/OS X system.

I have seen files "turn invisible" in some circumstances on Macs because of a mis-set bit in the filename mask. This bit is what Mac OS used to make a file invisible. It's honored in Mac OS X. You can use any file utility that is able to reset the invisibility bit. I can highly recommend File Buddy for the job, but there are many others (www.versiontracker.com.)

I'll return you to the main question pool so someone else may help you.

prepressjedi - Aug 22, 2005 - 10:40 am

Well thanks for the suggestion...it hasnt happend the last 2 nights...I hate mysteries. I will look into the file buddy piece and maybe expiriment the next time it happens.

TechSupport - Aug 25, 2005 - 11:30 am

This ticket has been moved to the open forums for more exposure.

Please follow this link:

http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=241253