Will applications using streams work on Samba?

I've an application that requires to create NTFS-Streams over the
network.
Currently this is only possible using a Win2K Server using NTFS.

I want to port to Samba, but I didn't find if this will work with my
application. Does anyone know or ever tryed to create and read a
stream on Samba?

Thanks
Tom

TomW wrote:
> I've an application that requires to create NTFS-Streams over the
> network.
> Currently this is only possible using a Win2K Server using NTFS.
>
> I want to port to Samba, but I didn't find if this will work with my
> application. Does anyone know or ever tryed to create and read a
> stream on Samba?

Probably, this is very OT for this NG, but since I recently had an
encounter of the nasty kind with these, and have the info at hand,
I'll post it:

ADS (Alternate Data Streams) are an NTFS 'feature' carried apparently
carried over, sort of, from OS/2, and offer the would-be spammer or
pornoslimer a virtually undetectible way to store their garbage,
including executibles, on your NT/2000/XP machine. After more than
5 years, MS *still* has not provided a tool for detecting these little
beasties . . . even when they grow to reach their maximum size of
4 GB. Except for noticing that your 10 GB drive is full even though
your files only total 2 GB . . . there's no MS provided way to detect
them. (Well, you *may* get a warning message, if you try to copy an
ADS contamined file to an non-NTFS volume.)

They are NOT supported on FAT / FAT32 / EXT3 filesystems, and wierd
things can happen when you try to copy ADS contaminated files to a
Samba volume. For a variety of reasons, both technical and philosophical,
my guess (FWIW) is that they will never be supported by Samba. The
file name error problems *may* be resolved in the latest versions
of Samba; I just don't know. Not many people know about ADS and very
few programs use them, which is probably fortunate.

For info on ADS from the 'evil empire's' POV:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;105763
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;319300
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;286797
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;219291
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;303079


And, ADS info from those inclined to believe that the
empire *is* evil:
http://patriot.net/~carvdawg/docs/dark_side.html
http://seifried.org/security/advisories/kssa-003.html

Or, to quote from a blog:
"Adam brought in this cool little tidbit from a security conference he
attended yesterday. It dealt with ADS ,or Alternate Data Streams. Its a
built in feature in XP that poses a possibly severe security risk. See,
through the use of ADS, someone could attatch a virus to a file of any
kind, even a directory if they wanted, and the OS would never know about
it. Also, there are no virus programs out there that can identify the
hidden stream. You can probably imagine the possible implications. When
not being thought of in terms of virus's though, it is possible to hide
up to 4 gigs of data on a hard drive utilizing ADS and the OS would
never be able to see it, only the person who created the stream would
have access to it. This is a big problem for people like me, Network
Administrators, because if a monkey (usually referred to as "users")
learn about it, they can hide otherwise questionable material from us on
their workstations. You can check out the article on ADS here."

And, an extensive discussion on Google Groups:
http://tinyurl.com/u3dj


Ben

PS: What *kind* of application do you have, exactly? It's not malware,
by chance, is it?