Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Xsan

dotclean and Extended Attributes on Xsan

If you’ve been upgrading Xsan from version to version without doing a nuke + pave of your volume then you might still not be using extended attributes. Instead you might still be using ._ files, or AppleDouble files. Apple has a script included with Xsan, dotclean, which will go ahead and perform the conversion, although it does take awhile to run according to how many files you have. In order to kick it off, first unmount the volume for all except the controller that will do the conversion. Next, simply open Xsan Admin, click on Volumes and then the volume you wish to enable it for. From here, click on the gear icon and then under Extended Attributes click on Enable on this Volume. This will invoke dotclean.

To do so programatically, Apple has included a dotclean_wrapper.sh shell script in the /user/share/servermgrd/bundles/servermgr_xsan.bundle/Contents/Resources directory. From here, simply run the shell script with a single positional parameter of the volume name. For example, if the volume were called MyVolume:

./dotclean_wrapper.sh /Volumes/MyVolume