Long file names between Mac OSX & Windows 2000?

[Chip Mangini]

I hope someone here can help me on this one.

I have several Mac's and Windows PC's connected to a
Windows 2000 server. When I connect to the server from a
Mac running OSX 10.2.6 some of the longer file names get
truncated.

Example: "Beatles - Live In Houston August 19, 1965"

Becomes: BR2BFG9~1

Is there a way to prevent this so the Mac's can "see" the
same names as the other Windows computers on the network?

 

[Sandy]

Windows 2000 Server (and Windows Server 2003) only support AFP v2.2, which
is limited to 31 characters, and when a file/folder name longer than this is
encountered Windows Server returns the old DOS 8.3 name.

You can try using SMB/CIFS to connect to the Windows Server
(smb://fileserver/share) instead of AFP (afp://fileserver/share), or use
another file server product which supports AFP v3.1, which allows
file/folder names as long as 255 characters, for example:
- Novell Native File Access on Novell NetWare 6.5
(http://www.novell.com/products/netware/),
- Apple Mac OS X Server (http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/),
- ExtremeZ-IP (http://www.grouplogic.com/products/extreme/overview.cfm) on
Windows Server also supports AFP 3.1's long file folder/names.

Microsoft have been a little lazy (and user unfriendly) here with
file/folder names longer than 31 characters, Novell Native File Access and
ExtremeZ-IP truncate long file/folder names to 31 characters for AFP 2.x
(Mac OS 9.x) clients, MS just drops back to the old DOS 8.3 naming.

-Sandy

 

[Patrick Peccatte]

In addition to solutions given by Sandy, you can also try our MacNames which
is able to truncate filenames longer than 31, translate invalid chars for
Windows, add Windows extensions according to Mac signatures, see:
http://peccatte.karefil.com/software/MacNames/MacNamesEN.htm