hidden files on SMB drive

traveller

Will tonfotos create hidden files in directory? I just found that there are some files with the same filename of the photos but just have a “.” in the filename so make it be hidden files. I am not sure which software create such files

Andrey

traveller Tonfotos does create .tonfotos.ini files with information about people faces on photos. This is mechanism is essential for syncronisation of information for several copies of Tonfotos applicaiton working with the same archive, as well as backup measure for all the work people do with marking up faces of photos.

Please read this to get better understanding: https://community.tonfotos.com/d/186-version-150-people-data-synchronization

traveller

Andrey Thanks for clarification

pemer

The issue isn’t with the hidden .tonfotos.ini file; rather, it’s that there are 50 photos named img12122121.jpg and 50 hidden files with the same names but prefixed with “.” , like .img12122121.jpg. When you try to open these hidden files (which tonfotos can see but Finder can’t, even after using shift + command + . on a Mac), you’ll receive a message indicating that the file is corrupted.

Andrey

pemer This is definitely not Tonfotos who created those files.

pemer

Andrey It’s unfortunate, but this keeps happening whenever I delete files in tonfotos. Instead of being fully removed, tonfotos seems to create a hidden (and corrupted) version of them. I wonder if this issue is related to the files being stored on an SMB share, and whether macOS is unable to use the SMB trash folder named .recycle instead of .Trash?
Picture attached

Andrey

pemer when deleting, Tonfotos will first try to move file to recycle bin using system functuon, and if it fails, it will just remove file. I guess, those files are created by OS while trying to move file to recylce bin. Did you try deleting files with Finder? Does it produce same result?

pemer

I believe I’ve found a fix! It appears that tweaking a few settings in the Samba configuration has resolved the issue. I’ll be monitoring the situation, and if it happens again, I’ll let you know. For those dealing with the same Samba share problem, here are the settings I added to smb.conf. I have also highlighted the most important option to be turned on

[global]

macOSx

min protocol = SMB2
vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
fruit:ntfs_aces = yes
fruit:metadata = stream
fruit:posix_rename = yes
fruit:veto_appledouble = no
fruit:wipe_intentionally_left_blank_rfork = yes
fruit:apple = yes
fruit:model = MacSamba
fruit:delete_empty_adfiles = yes
fruit:zero_file_id = yes
server min protocol = SMB2

WINS Support

wins support = yes
dns proxy = yes

Andrey

pemer Cool! I moved this thread to other section so others will have less issues finding it.

warenext

I also noticed that when browsing a network (SMB) share, tonfotos is displaying the hidden so-called AppleDouble file system files (which begin with dot underscore ._ characters) in the Folders tab of the interface, which tonfotos displays using the “broken image” icon. It would seem that the proper behavior of the program should be to ignore (and not display) “image” files whose file names begin with dot underscore characters, since these files are not actually images. It’s a bit of an annoyance when you’re working in a cross-platform environment to see all these “broken” images displayed in the Folder view, and I would expect that writing filter function to exclude them shouldn’t be too difficult. The workaround suggested earlier in this thread (to modify smb.conf on the Samba server) is better suited to technically sophisticated users, while for ordinary users, having tonfotos just ignore these files is the better answer. [I’m using the macOS version of tonfotos, and I really appreciate it!]

Andrey

warenext Though I totally agree that correct approach is when program itself understands that those are just junk files and ignores it, I am a bit conservative here because I don’t yet have full understanding where those files are coming from and what application is responsible for it, and what is more important, how to reproduce this behaviour in our test lab. Once I have full understanding of the issue, I will add filtering those files in no time.

Thank you for pointing our in the right direction though. I am now reading what AppleDouble is. Never heard of it before.

warenext

I’ll be happy to provide the specifics of my environment if that’ll help with testing. As I said, I’m using the macOS version of tonfotos (1.13.8) on macOS Sequoia 15.6.1, and browsing a Ubuntu server (running 24.04.3 LTS) via SMB over my home LAN. The SMB share I’m accessing is configured simply in /etc/samba/smb.conf:

[photoprism]
comment = opt directory on photoprism server
path = /opt
read only = no
browseable = yes

The server is also running photoprism ( https://www.photoprism.app ) in Docker, and my photos directory is used by both the photoprism Docker instance (via a Docker volume) and shared via smbd.

The files showing up in tonfotos Folder tab as “broken image” icons are metadata files used by macOS to store attributes of files located on network shares (like SMB), and have the same filename as the file they’re describing, with “dot underscore” ._ in front. So, for an image file called filename.jpg , there would be a corresponding ._filename.jpg file. As you know, the dot character in front of the filename is macOS’ convention for “hidden” files, which are not ordinarily displayed in the Finder, like the .tonfotos.ini file that tonfotos uses. But these “dot underscore” files don’t even show up in the Finder if you press Command + Shift + . to display hidden files, unlike tonfotos’ ini file.

As an example, if I use macOS’s Terminal.app to look at my network volume /Volumes/photoprism/photoprism/originals/1994 , and use ls -al , I can see both the dot underscore files, and the files they’re describing listed.

:uname@Mac 1994 % ls -al
total 1288
drwx—— 1 uname staff 16384 Sep 22 04:52 .
-rwx—— 1 uname staff 4096 Sep 22 04:52 ..tonfotos.ini
-rwx—— 1 uname staff 4096 Sep 20 16:38 .20120224_135359_1D3B1030.jpg
-rwx—— 1 uname staff 4096 Sep 20 16:38 .20120224_135359_5B8EF6E6.jpg
-rwx—— 1 uname staff 4096 Sep 20 16:38 .20120224_135359_E12E0F8A.jpg
-rwx—— 1 uname staff 4096 Sep 22 04:26 ._20161115_104028_5CC6E68F.jpg
drwx—— 1 uname staff 16384 Sep 21 19:41 ..
-rwx——@ 1 uname staff 449 Sep 22 04:52 .tonfotos.ini
-rwx——@ 1 uname staff 189395 Sep 20 16:38 20120224_135359_1D3B1030.jpg
-rwx——@ 1 uname staff 197219 Sep 20 16:38 20120224_135359_5B8EF6E6.jpg
-rwx——@ 1 uname staff 142489 Sep 20 16:38 20120224_135359_E12E0F8A.jpg
-rwx——@ 1 uname staff 64881 Sep 22 04:26 20161115_104028_5CC6E68F.jpg

What’s confusing to tonfotos is that the dot underscore files and the actual image files both have .jpg extensions, so tonfotos tries to display them, and reads them as “corrupted”. As a test, I created a new directory on the SMB server ( /Volumes/photoprism/photoprism/originals/1996 ), and created a test .jpg file in my image editor (a 800×600 JPEG filled with 50% gray). Once I saved my 50gray.jpg to the network share, ls -al looks like this:

uname@Mac 1996 % ls -al
total 96
drwx—— 1 uname staff 16384 Sep 22 05:59 .
-rwx—— 1 uname staff 4096 Sep 22 05:59 ._50gray.jpg
drwx—— 1 uname staff 16384 Sep 22 05:53 ..
-rwx——@ 1 uname staff 9703 Sep 22 05:59 50gray.jpg

So it’s clearly macOS creating these dot underscore files on the share.

warenext

And in the tonfotos interface, the 50gray.jpg looks like this, alongside the “broken image” icon for ._50gray.jpg .

Andrey

warenext
Thank you, this is helpful