HELIOS presents all new “dt” tools

The new HELIOS “dt” tools allow storing and working with client files on a UNIX server, while ensuring that Macintosh resource information, Windows file stream information, and meta data are left intact. The main UNIX commands for handling files, including “rm”, “rmdir”, “mv”, “cp”, “ls”, “mkdir”, “touch”, “chmod”, “chown”, and “chgrp” do not preserve these extra file resources. Thus, use of the “dt” tools utilities is a great boon to system integrators, experienced HELIOS users, and scripting developers.

HELIOS “dt” tools feature high Mac OS X, Windows, and UNIX compatibility and come with many advantages over the standard UNIX commands.

Starting with the Windows NTFS file system, Windows supports Macintosh resource information and meta data, and stores these in Windows NTFS compatible file streams. Modern Windows applications use file streams as well. HELIOS PCShare UB volumes fully support Windows NTFS file streams. The new “dt” tools will automatically handle additional file streams when copying, renaming, and removing files.

Mac OS X is based on UNIX compatible file permissions and modes. The Mac OS X AFP 3 protocol supports file based permissions as well as special files like symbolic links. The new “dt” tools now support file based permissions and special files. dt cp -pR copies files and folders while preserving permissions, symbolic links, all additional NTFS streams, and Macintosh resources and meta data. In addition, each operation updates the HELIOS desktop database to allow a fast “find file” operation – an essential feature for large server volumes. The “dt” tools also update the unique file and directory IDs, which are used to reference files within Mac OS X, so that e.g. aliases will still be resolved after a file has been moved. The updated “dt set” command allows specifying the Mac OS Finder color label.

HELIOS Base UB introduces a new central authentication service (“authsrv”) which is used to support local, NIS, AD/PDC and LDAP (upcoming) users, groups and passwords within HELIOS products. dt ls -l will show proper Windows AD/PDC user / groups names. “dt chown” / “dt chgrp” allows specifying AD/PDC names.

The default behavior for the new “dt” tools is that the commands (“rm”, “rmdir”, “mv”, “cp”, “ls”, “mkdir”, “touch”, “chmod”, “chown”, and “chgrp”) are highly UNIX compatible. Many tool arguments have been enhanced to be compatible with the UNIX tools, and also to introduce new features like file event notifications for triggering automated ImageServer UB Script Server scripting workflows for updated files.

Availability: April 2006 via update No. u0526.

“dt” tools documentation

Mac OS 8/9 does not know about file permissions, the old “dt” tools always used to assign the parent folder permissions / ownership to files. The new “dt” tools behaves fully UNIX compatible and therefore supports file permissions. Some scripts may need to be updated to change permissions after file copy / move operations, to provide higher Mac OS 8/9 compatibility.