How do I create an AppleDouble "dot-underscore" file from the command line?

We're going through a process of migrating NetWare shares to Windows shares (without File Services for Macintosh) where I work. One concern is that the NetWare shares are shared as AFP volumes to the Macs. All the finder info and metadata for the files is thus stored natively and invisible to all the servers involved in the migration. If the Novel migrator or robocopy copy the files, resource forks and metadata are lost.

The procedure I've provided the migration team involves making a UFS disk image, identifying files on the NetWare share that have Mac resource forks or metadata, copying the files from NetWare to the image one-by-one (whereby the OS creates the AppleDouble dot-underscore files), and then copying the dot-underscore files back to the NetWare share so that when either migration tool is used, the files correctly appear on the Windows shares in AppleDouble form with forks and metadata intact. This works reliably enough, but it involves a HUGE amount of network activity, and there's issues with making sure that the permissions are correct in the process.

Is there a way to directly produce the AppleDouble dot-underscore file from a file on an AFP share. Things like SplitForks, RezWhack, etc. don't work on shares. I cannot find any command-line utility, AppleScript extension, Automator action, etc. to do it.

2 iMacs (me + kids), 2 MacBook Pros (work + wife), Mac OS X (10.5.7), various Linux PCs and one WinXP laptop (gathering dust)

Posted on May 23, 2009 2:47 PM

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2 replies

May 25, 2009 4:44 AM in response to Bill Scott

Thank you. I am aware of that, cpio as well. The problem is that I don't want to have to copy the files, just create the dot-underscore file. For various reasons, we still need to use the Windows-based migration tools to migrate the files. So what I want is something that can read the metadata and resource fork WITHOUT making a copy of the file to produce the dot-underscore file. The solution I
currently have for them works like tar (without the extra step of storing things in the archive or requirement of using OS X tar to unpack it).

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How do I create an AppleDouble "dot-underscore" file from the command line?

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