Damn Mac's dot-underscore (AppleDot) problem
October 19, 2006
So it seems OSX likes to add ._ (dot-underscore or AppleDot) copies of files when transferring files between operating systems. This can get pretty annoying when you see a ._copy of every single file in your tree. Unfortunately, after reading everything I could find on the net it seems there is no way to filter them out properly on the mac side. I tried everything I could think of.
My problem is creating a tarball file (tgz) that needs to be extracted on a linux box. When that file gets extracted there are ._ files scattered all over the place. For example ._.htaccess ._index.html, etc. Very annoying. The only thing I can suggest is when you extract the tar file use the exclude option
tar -xzpvf mytarfile.tgz --exclude="._*"
that will at least untar all the files without putting the ._ files on the filesystem.
My problem is creating a tarball file (tgz) that needs to be extracted on a linux box. When that file gets extracted there are ._ files scattered all over the place. For example ._.htaccess ._index.html, etc. Very annoying. The only thing I can suggest is when you extract the tar file use the exclude option
tar -xzpvf mytarfile.tgz --exclude="._*"
that will at least untar all the files without putting the ._ files on the filesystem.
Ryan Platte says:
October 20, 2006 @ 20:17 — Reply
I have never seen this before. .DS_Store, that I've seen, but never ._everything, and I've been using OS X in heterogenous environments almost every day since 10.1. Can you tell us anything more about what you're transferring from and to? Are you using a GUI program to do the transfer?
Jim says:
October 20, 2006 @ 20:51 — Reply
hey Ryan, you can find some details out here: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/7 some more info: When the Finder copies or moves a file, it uses the richest model available, given the formats of the source and destination volumes. The formats that are most significant in these kinds of operations are HFS+ (or HFS) and UFS. These operations particularly affect the representation of the HFS and HFS+ resource fork and the Finder attributes, especially the type and creator codes. As one might expect, the Finder preserves the resource fork and Finder attributes of an HFS+ file "as is" when it copies the file to an HFS+ (or HFS) volume. The more interesting case, however, is when it copies an HFS+ file to a UFS volume. When this happens, the Finder splits out the information that is not in the data fork (particularly the type and creator codes) and writes this information to a hidden file in the same directory location as the copied file. This hidden file has the same name as the UFS file, except that it has a "dot-underscore" prefix. Thus, if you have an HFS+ file named MyMug.jpeg, when you copy it to a UFS volume, there will be a file named ._MyMug.jpeg in the same location. (my emphasis)
David Olinsky says:
October 23, 2006 @ 13:53 — Reply
Jimbo, try this from the bash: export COPY_EXTENDED_ATTRIBUTES_DISABLE =true You could also try ftp/scp before you tar the files (since it's the tar itself that creates the resource forks).
Jim says:
October 25, 2006 @ 19:36 — Reply
David you're the f'ing man. that seems to have worked :) damn, couldn't find any info about that when I was searching around.
Dan says:
November 17, 2006 @ 20:50 — Reply
Awesome. I've been digging all over the internet and through the tar info files for this! Thank you for finding this out and putting it up.
Ken S. says:
January 10, 2007 @ 20:54 — Reply
If you want to make it a "permanent" setting, add it to your .bash_profile file in your home directory.
Bryce says:
April 10, 2007 @ 04:26 — Reply
Well I found this article about .DS_Store http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301711 But it is a hammer approach, and my real problem is with the dot-underscore files. When I copy a single standalone mp3 file with NO SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES to my USB mp3 player, I get a ._ file as well. This causes the player to choke. How can I control OS X's habit of littering foreign filesystems on a filesystem-by-filesystem basis? And how would that work for removable drives?
Shane Moss says:
May 3, 2007 @ 15:49 — Reply
This is known as the Apple Double filesystem. Apple has been using this for years (since the A/UX days). Any time Mac OS X writes forked files to a non-native filesystem (not HFS(+)) it will write in Apple Double. My favorite GUI method of cleaning these files is with a System Preference called Blue Harvest. Here is a way forum on how to prevent it on network volumes.
Gwik says:
May 11, 2007 @ 20:07 — Reply
I have a bigger problem, I used to use find . -iname '._*' -exec rm -rf {} \; to get rid of those F***ing files but this doesn't work anymore. Neither can I use --exclude-partern with tar, this doesn't work. I cannot erase those files except manually.
Michael Trier says:
May 28, 2007 @ 14:00 — Reply
Damn, I spent 6 hours looking for the answer to this. Thaks David.
Mike Bishop says:
June 3, 2007 @ 21:37 — Reply
If you want to remove the files easily run this from terminal: sudo rm */._* -R -v Careful... This will run through every child directory and remove all files with ._ prefixed. Back your s**t up.
Robert Pogorzelski says:
August 30, 2009 @ 09:02 — Reply
This may be helpful if anyone's looking for a radical solution: http://robertpogorzelski.com/blog/2009/08/30/getting-rid-of-mac-osx-crap-in-tarballs/
上海SEO says:
November 3, 2009 @ 01:15 — Reply
If you want to remove the files easily run this from terminal: sudo rm
judebert says:
November 18, 2009 @ 11:14 — Reply
I'm having similar trouble while creating a tarball. The environment variable didn't help. Apparently it's changed on Leopard; there, use COPYFILE_DISABLE=true instead.
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