how to handle .streams folders

aristosv · Post by **aristosv** » Sat May 13, 2017 12:26 am

I've set up an external drive backup job, between a disk inside my TS-431P and an external USB disk.
Every time the backup runs I get messages in the logs saying that files were skipped because they have unsupported file names.
All these skipped files are located in the .streams folder. I have no idea what these files are, or how this .streams folder was created.
When I delete the .streams folder, the backup runs without any errors.

Anyone had this problem before? How do I handle this?
Thanks

dolbyman · Post by **dolbyman** » Sat May 13, 2017 3:07 am

is it a folder or a share ? .. any printout of such error logs ?

aristosv · Post by **aristosv** » Sat May 13, 2017 7:02 am

its a shared folder.
this is a screenshot of the logs.

1.png

dolbyman · Post by **dolbyman** » Sat May 13, 2017 7:11 am

what is your external usb disk formatted as ?

EXT4
NTFS ?

albumman · Post by **albumman** » Sat May 13, 2017 7:45 pm

aristosv wrote:I've set up an external drive backup job, between a disk inside my TS-431P and an external USB disk.
Every time the backup runs I get messages in the logs saying that files were skipped because they have unsupported file names.
All these skipped files are located in the .streams folder. I have no idea what these files are, or how this .streams folder was created.
When I delete the .streams folder, the backup runs without any errors.

Anyone had this problem before? How do I handle this?
Thanks

There are other threads regarding this and for me, it began after installing the officially released version of f/w 4.3.3. I opened a ticket and their answer was to "ignore the error" and claims it will be fixed in the next f/w build which did not happen either.

aristosv · Post by **aristosv** » Mon May 15, 2017 2:11 am

@dolbyman all disks are NTFS
@albumman good to know I'm not the only one.

aristosv · Post by **aristosv** » Mon May 15, 2017 2:15 am

I guess I could set up a cron job to delete the .streams folders before the backup. But that would be a workaround, not a solution.

dolbyman · Post by **dolbyman** » Mon May 15, 2017 5:08 am

well the internal disks can't be ntfs

aristosv · Post by **aristosv** » Mon May 15, 2017 12:24 pm

@dolbyman
Do you have a suggestion?

dolbyman · Post by **dolbyman** » Mon May 15, 2017 12:48 pm

my guess was file name depth of internal ext4 vs external ntfs drives ...

but if it is a known issue wait for a qnap fix I guess

albumman · Post by **albumman** » Sat May 27, 2017 8:44 pm

aristosv wrote:@dolbyman all disks are NTFS
@albumman good to know I'm not the only one.

Did you happen to open a ticket too? Mine got closed awhile back with no fix yet. If not, please open one. Thanks.

aristosv · Post by **aristosv** » Sat May 27, 2017 10:25 pm

Actually the .streams folder was being copied over to the qnap while backing up my laptop data. Even though I couldn't find this folder on my laptop, after running the backup, it would appear on qnap. So I just modified the backup job to delete the .streams folder on qnap, after running the backup job.

MikeLagit · Post by **MikeLagit** » Sat Aug 19, 2017 8:01 am

Brilliant QNAP. I have this strewn over all my shares...

Moogle Stiltzkin · Post by **Moogle Stiltzkin** » Fri Jun 15, 2018 4:19 pm

the check mark "Filter system-generated temporary files" does not filter the .Streams folders!

only with DS_Store, / @ *, /. * entered in Other filters the .streams folders were skipped.

mfg
Olaf

Hello,

I'll try to shed some light on the subject.

The ".streams" folder is created by SAMBA - this is the software that can create Windows shares under Linux and controls CIFS / SMB access for the Windows systems.

In the ".streams" folder, the Alternate data streams are stored by the NTFS - here, for example, Windows determines whether a file has been downloaded from the Internet and displays corresponding warnings. Since Linux / EXT4 does not know Alternate data streams, SAMBA has to drop the ADS somewhere - and that happens in the .streams folders. The problem with deleting the folders is that SAMBA - and thus Windows - lose all information stored in the ADS.

So, I hope I was able to clear up a little bit - for more details I can recommend the Wikipedia to NTFS.

LHS

https://forum.qnapclub.de/thread/43995-ordner-streams/

[youtube=]qBrFW3gpjpM[/youtube]

they ought to include this type of explanation into the FAQ imho
https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/

MikeLagit · Post by **MikeLagit** » Tue May 26, 2020 12:44 am

I suppose this isn't possible, but what would be really nice is if Samba didn't write any .streams at all when going to ext4. Anyone know if it's possible? I didn't find anything in the Samba configuration to disable writing .streams.

As far as I can tell the data is useless and I have setup a cron job to delete them each day.

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