Setting Base Folders with SMB Shares

[pmolaro]

This message is sort of related to this forum post (http://www.scootersoftware.com/vbull...ad.php?t=12942), but different enough that it seemed worthy of its own post.

I just started using the BC4 beta on mac (love it). In general it works very well. One thing I have run into pretty quickly is how base folder mappings work with SAMBS shared drives.

In my setup most of my shares are on a remote Windows server, so in BC I am connecting to them with the SMB share address to I get the auto-mounting (which is nice). For example:

smb://server1.myhost.com/websites/dev.mysite.com/web/
to
smb://server2.myhost.com/websites/stage.mysite.com/web/

Because of the way the Mac handles mounting, what happens is the drives mount as aliased volumes like:
/Volumes/websites
AND
/Volumes/websites-1

At this point BC is opening the "websites" folder of each share and doesn't get beyond that to the desired sub-folders. This makes what I see on the Left different than what I see on the right.

Easily enough, I can right-click the left and right folders I want to compare and select "Set Base Folder". That opens both, and they are treated as equal mapped folders left and right.


However, if I save these session settings, my mappings change from the SMB addresses to the VOLUME addresses. Next time I try to connect, the Mac has no idea where /Volumes/websites really is and doesn't connect.

For now, I have left my settings with the SMB addresses, and just manually select the base folders every time I open a session, and then just don't save the session updates.

It would be a GREAT FEATURE, if BC could either remember those base folder settings differently for SMB address connections, allow the connections to be made, and then trying to walk the base directory path from that point. In other words, start trying to find the base directory from the "websites" or "websites-1" starting points.
OR, perhaps Mac users get an extra setting where we have the address which can be the SMB address and a second setting for the base path to look for once the address has connected via whatever alias the mac assigns the mounted drive (websites, websites-1, etc.)


I'm sure there are arguments that can be made by Scooter to say that doesn't make sense with the Windows version and we want to keep the feature set in sync as much as we can, and so on. However, there are tons of great folder compare tools for mac already. I'd wager that most Mac users who will be using BC were using the windows version prior and were working with Windows shares. So the bulk of this user base will be connecting to windows drives. That seems to make this a very valid and needed feature in the 1.0 release.

If somebody has a way to achieve this feature with the current functionality please share. Otherwise, if you agree with the need for this feature enhancement please respond and let Scooter know you agree.

THX ALL!

[Aaron]

Actually, this is a scenario we are working on getting fixed. No arguments here.

Thanks for the precise details and specific example of smb:// paths.

[ings]

Was this scenario ever fixed? I've look around the options in the latest Mac version but I can't see anything.

I too just converted from Windows to Mac and am trying to make BC work in a similar fashion. In my case, because the folder address is remapped to /Volume/, and because my NAS shuts down each night, when I launch BC the next day the /Volume/ address won't resolve and I have to retrieve the folder navigation. Since I have multiple BC sessions to retrieve this is rather painful!

On Windows, the reconnect happened like magic. :-)

Thanks.

Dave Ings

[Zoë]

Bc for Mac and Linux both support smb:// paths for base folder. The browse dialog is a little sketchy about it, but if you enter them manually they should work and remount.

[ings]

Bc for Mac and Linux both support smb:// paths for base folder. The browse dialog is a little sketchy about it, but if you enter them manually they should work and remount.

Thanks. I discovered (trail and error) that the trick is to enter the smb://userid@server/share address in the session settings dialog - not on the comparison screen in the file path entry field. If you do the former BC remembers it, if you do the latter it tends to get remapped to /Volume/share before you know it!

The other thing I've noticed - although I suspect this is an OS X issue not a BC issue - is that quick file comparisons take 2-3 times longer on OS X (this is on a brand new iMac with SSD) than on Windows. This surprised me (my comparisons are between the iMac and a Synology NAS server, with roughly 10K files in 500 directories being compared).

Dave Ings

[Aaron]

Hello,

If you type the smb:// path into the main comparison view, it will display the remapped path, but if you click on the path it should display the originally typed path and the session saved with the originally typed path. Are you seeing different behavior? Are you running the latest 4.1.2 release?

Which method of launching the Quick Compare are you using? Are you in an open Folder Compare, browsing the local OSX drive letter and NAS bound with smb://, then select two files (left/right) and right-click: Quick Compare on a single pair of files? Or are you using the Compare Contents command? You mention 10k files, but Quick Compare would only work on a single pair of 2 files.

[ings]

Hello,

Are you seeing different behavior? Are you running the latest 4.1.2 release?

Quick Compare on a single pair of files? Or are you using the Compare Contents command?

1) I am running 4.1.2. Right now (wouldn't you know it!) I can't get the smb format to remap to the Volume format in the Folder Compare windows, in order to try clicking on it like you suggest.

2) I'm probably not describing my scenario correctly. I'm not doing a "quick compare" on an individual file, but when doing a recursive directory tree comparison I have the "quick compare" settings turned on i.e. compare files based on timestamps not contents. I launch BC with four different comparison sessions in the Folder Compare Window, looking for deltas between my iMac and my NAS. (I prefer to do backups like this versus using Time Machine.) That's why I am comparing (roughly) 10K files and 500 directories, and my experience (YMMV) is that to complete the four tree comparisons takes 2-3 times longer than when I was running Windows 10 (on a five year old Dell no less!)

(2) is not the end of the world, but I am very surprised that OS X is that much slower than W10 for this SMB operation.

Dave Ings

[Aaron]

Hello,

1) If you see the other behavior come back, please feel free to take as many different full screen screenshots as you can and post or email us at [email protected] with a link back to this forum thread. We'll try to track it down.

2) Understood. We do have a literal "Quick Compare" command, but from the description I thought you might be talking about a general Folder Compare. While it is possible to see performance variance, is there anything else that might differ in your setup (Windows vs OSX)? Are both machines on a wired network connection? If you use OSX's Finder to navigate to the server and copy some test files to/from, do you see similar performance differences? Or notice it takes awhile to display a large folder?

[ings]

Some good suggestions here. I'll give them a go in a few days time (I have other stuff on the go right now). Main config difference is I *did* switch from a wired to a wireless connection when I switched from the old Dell desktop to the new iMac, and while I wouldn't have thought the additional network latency would have made *that* much difference, maybe it did - worth checking out.

Thanks.

Dave Ings

[ings]

Quick update: I plugged an Ethernet cable into the iMac and lo and behold, the iMac/NAS sync performance returned to W10 levels. I never would have guessed EN would have made that much of an improvement over WiFi (my router is relatively new) but in this scenario it seems to!

Dave Ings

[Aaron]

Wireless is tricky to troubleshoot, as sporadic interference or the location of devices might have impact. If you download a few apps to help gauge signal strength, you could try moving components or adjusting antenna to get a better signal to boost performance. Wired will likely still be better, so it is a balance between convenience and speed.