File Path Tracking

[Graham J Lee]

On 16 Oct 2007, at 08:43, Markus Hitter wrote:

>
>> In this recent items example all it stores is the alias data, so  
>> it seems like if two people have an alias to the same file, one  
>> local another via network, and they try to open the same file from  
>> the alias in their recent list they would come up with some kind  
>> of hanged state, but I have never heard of that happening?
>
> Probably, because Apple recommends to work either all local or all  
> network. The kind of setup to put a few Homes on each of the  
> participating computers while mounting them remotely on the other  
> machines is often seen in Unix-only networks but very rarely with  
> Mac OS X.
>

I did this when I worked for a University (admin and root had local  
home directories, everyone else accessed a file server for theirs,  
which is actually less distributed (and less insane) than the NIS/NFS- 
style setup you describe) and never found any problems, but then I'm  
not sure what problems might be expected.  I suppose the point is  
that sharing an alias between a 'local' and 'network' user is not  
guaranteed to work, but then that rarely if ever happened because [i] 
no-one logged in at the file server locally and [ii]sharing paths or  
files is much more intuitive than sharing aliases, because the former  
are descriptive and the latter is opaque.

Cheers,
Graham.