Quark Forums

We want to transfer all files (including a massive number of Quark documents) saved on a 6-year-old Apple Xserver to a new PC server to be administered by our IT dept. If we copy all Apple sharepoints, folders and inclusive files (not changing any folder or file names, etc) over to a PC server will all links in Quark be retained? Will someone on a Mac (over a network connection) be able to open a old Quark doc and have all pictures retain their links without getting any type of "modified" message requiring an "update" just like they used to when everything was resident on the Apple Xserver? 

Has anyone already gone through this exercise and be able to tell me what their good or bad experiences were?

 Thanks in advance.

I have been through a similar excercise. Not the same, but similar. We had a Win2003 server that died. I had AFS running on it. When it died, I had to move all the files to my Mac until we got a new server. That was fine (except for it's own issues) until it was time to go to a PC server. Then my nightmares began.  Here's some info:

Assuming you will NOT be using SFM (Services for Macintosh) on the server. 

 1. Out of the box SMB for Mac OS does not have all the bells and whistles that PCs use. Even Leopard machines. The big one for you (and IT) will be digital signing. IT will have to disable this on the server.

2. If IT wants to use AD (Active Directory) then someone is going to have to reasearch how to enable and setup AD on the Macs. It will involved BINDing the Macs to the domain.

3. You are going to need to put three letter extensions on the end of all your fienames so that the Mac can understand what program to open the file with. .qxp for XPress documents, .tif for tiff files, etc. This is because PCs do not have Resource forks.

4. Along with 3, IT will need to be aware that the Macs are going to litter the server HD with "._" dot underscore files. These are files that the Mac OS leaves behind to account for the lack of resource forks on PC hard drives. There will also be DS_Store files, which tell your Mac your folder view settings. You can turn some of this off if you have Tiger (minimum), but not all of it.

5. TIF files that have been modified on the server, WON'T be seen as modified by QuarkXPress. That has to do with resource forks on the Mac side.

6. If you are using Autobackup and/or Autosave, it's important that both the server clock and the client clocks be in synch, so that you don't get temp files (this is if you are using XPress 6.x). We have our server keeping time with time.apple.com. Our Macs default to that, so everybody is reading the same time server.

If you will be using SFM, just keep in mind that even the latest version of Windows server used an outdated version of AFP. Which means you are limited to filenames of 32 characters (including any three letter extensions). If you have long filenames (and an Xserv should have allowed that, you are in for a rude shock trying to transfer to an AFS share on the PC server.

There's probably more, but this is what I can give off the top of my head.

Oh, yeah, some solutions. AdmitMac by Thursby software is about $1000, but will allow you to use the PC server in the same way you did the XServ. It installs on the server.

ExtremeZIP is similar to AdmitMac, but it also allows you to eliminate Appletalk, should you want to do so. Also expensive.

DAVE, by Thursby as well, installs on the client Macs, and allows you to do what AdmitMac does, but you have to pay for each individual license.

Finally, check out Blue Harvest. This is a System Preference that will force your Mac to clean up those dot underscore files by deleting them. http://zeroonetwenty.com/blueharvest/

Hope that helps. 

Thanks for the quick response. This is a task I am not looking forward to but have to do.

regards

You're welcome. It's actually not a difficult task, as long as you are aware of the issues (which is why you were asking I take it). It was frustrating for me, because when I started on this I didn't know any of the details that I do now.

All I can say is I hate PCs, I hate AppleDouble files (resource forks), and I hate that Apple seems to focus on introducing new features with new OS's, but never fixing some of the underlying file issues. Why Apple doesn't have the same ability with SMB when every PC and Linux box out there does is beyond me.

Oh well, rant over. If I can help with anything else, just ask.