HELIOS File System Test

HELIOS File System Test is a professional tool for network administrators, other software vendors, and 3rd party developers to test file server compatibility. It allows every Mac user to easily determine if their file server is fully compatible with Mac OS X clients.

 

The following test results illustrate that only Apple and HELIOS provide servers with full Mac OS X AFP client compatibility:

 

Test	1	2	3	4	5	6	7 *	8	9	10	11
Write to data / resource fork	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Change file permissions	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	-	-	-	-
Set type / creator	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
File dates (creation, modification, backup)	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	-
Server copy file command	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	-
Find file (should be fast)	+	-	+	+	+	+**	+**	-	-	+**	-
File / directory ID consistency	+	+	+	+	+	-	+	+	+	+	+
File name with Unicode characters	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	+	+	-	+
Long file name (>31 characters)	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	+	+	-	+
Save existing file (exchange)	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	-
Large file support (4.1 GB test file)	+	+	+	+	-	-	+	-	-	-	-

Write to data / resource fork writes data to “data and resource fork” and verifies it. If this test fails, the resulting errors for customers are that custom icons and previews are shown as blank icons, placing EPSF images in documents will result in gray EPSF frames without a preview. Meta-data, like IPTC which is stored in the resource fork, gets lost. Correct data and resource forks are essential for any file system.

 

Change file permissions sets permissions to “no access” and verifies it. If this fails, Mac OS X users cannot change their file and folder permissions within the Finder or using the “chmod” command. It is required for AFP 3.1. If it is not supported, changing permissions remotely from the client is not possible, and users must verify and change permissions of server files on the server directly.

 

 

Set type / creator changes type and creator and verifies it. Type and creator are used for displaying correct icons and allowing automatic assignment of the related application, e.g. clicking on a PDF file will launch Acrobat. Mac OS X supports both type and creator as well as file extensions. If this feature does not work the Finder will only show generic icons and the “Navigation Open Dialog” of applications, e.g. open / save document, will not show your files.

 

File dates (creation, modification, backup) verifies support of file dates. Each file has multiple dates, e.g. the backup software updates the last backup date, and users can see the document creation date as well as the last update (modification) dates. It is really important that the different dates are supported to allow users to see changed files and to do proper backups.

 

Server copy file command verifies the AFP server “copy file” command. Not supported on local disks. When files and folders are copied within one server volume, the Mac Finder offloads the work to the server, which means it is not required to poll / push all data via the Mac OS client from and to the server. If this is not working the result for users can be that copies are very slow or will not work at all (depending on the application).

 

Find file (should be fast) searches for exact, partial and nonexistent file names. This test should be completed in a few seconds and should work with all file systems. Otherwise the “Find File” Finder option cannot be used to locate files on your file system. Modern server solutions will complete these tests in a few seconds due to a server desktop search support. Some server solutions may take a very long time to complete this test, e.g. Windows 2003 with 120000 files needs about 7 minutes.

 

File / directory ID consistency creates a file / directory, deletes it, creates a new one and verifies IDs. If this test fails users may use and delete randomly wrong files and folders. This is essential for any file system / server solution. Every Mac OS X application uses these IDs to reference files and folders. If this fails the user should not use this volume for their data, otherwise they might run into problems when using and deleting wrong files and folders. For example, you remove a folder with a few files but the server removes a completely different folder which can contain thousands of files. Please note that Mac OS X 10.3 will not tell you how many files you may remove.

 

File name with Unicode characters uses special characters in file names (international characters and symbols). Mac OS 9 supports less than 240 different characters (including symbols) for file names. Mac OS X and Windows support 16-bit Unicode character sets which can handle as many as 65536 different characters. If Unicode is not supported by your file system, saving or copying files in this volume will fail in many cases. This is required for Mac OS X clients.

 

Long file name (>31 characters) is needed for Mac OS X applications. Applications saving file names will not prevent users from choosing file names longer than 31 characters. This will fail in server volumes. Some applications, e.g. Apple Keynote cannot save documents in volumes that do not support file names longer than 31 characters.

 

Save existing file (exchange) tests the “exchange file command”. This is needed to save new versions of existing files preserving the original file ID. The Mac OS X exchange is the only safe way for applications to save a newer version of their documents. If this is not supported the result can be that the newly saved document contains the old data or that aliases pointing to your documents are broken after a new version has been saved, or some applications saving files on this file system will not work. It is essential for the Mac OS X file system to support this.

 

Large file support (4.1 GB test file) creates a large file and verifies it. May take very long on HFS volumes. Today's computer files can easily exceed 4 GB. For example, a DVD contains between 4.7 and 9 GB of data. iMovie will capture about 216 MB video data per minute and professional video editing software produces several times more data per minute. Print jobs can be larger than 4 GB. It is recommended that file systems can handle files larger than 4 GB.

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Test large file support may induce the AFP server to issue a time-out error for a volume on HFS file systems due to the fact that HFS has no “sparse” file system support, and all 4.1 GB data is written to disk during the verification. In the case of UFS file systems, refer to the chart above for correct large file support results.

 

HELIOS File System Test has been developed to be used under Mac OS X. However, it can also be used with Mac OS 9 clients. Please note that Mac OS 9 does not support AFP 3.1 and therefore the following tests would fail when being performed under Mac OS 9:

• Test changing file permissions
  
• Test file name with Unicode characters
  
• Test long file name (>31 characters)
  
• Test large file support (4.1 GB test file)

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HELIOS File System Test can be downloaded via HELIOS WebShare at:

Server:	http://webshare.helios.de
User name:	tools
Password	tools

Login, select the items to download, and select “Download” from the “Transfer” menu.

 

For Mac OS 9, use StuffIt Expander to unpack downloaded archive.

 

See also HELIOS LanTest »

See also HELIOS Xtar »

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HELIOS File System Test is copyright by HELIOS Software GmbH, Garbsen, Germany.