OS X file system metadata (how can I remove it)

LoneIgadzra

So a lot of times, when I compress things on my Mac to send to people on, say, Linux, when they unzip/untar/whatever the archive, they get all the files plus an accompanying invisible file for each containing all the Mac metadata (with the name format "._filename"). This is really annoying for the people I send files to.

Is there some way I can strip this metadata beforehand? Like as part of a tar command? As an aside, this also makes working with FAT16-formatted flash cards extremely irritating such that I only work on them with Windows, because, almost as soon as I mount the card in OS X, metadata files get sprayed everywhere.

Barrakketh

LoneIgadzra wrote: »

So a lot of times, when I compress things on my Mac to send to people on, say, Linux, when they unzip/untar/whatever the archive, they get all the files plus an accompanying invisible file for each containing all the Mac metadata (with the name format "._filename"). This is really annoying for the people I send files to.

Is there some way I can strip this metadata beforehand? Like as part of a tar command? As an aside, this also makes working with FAT16-formatted flash cards extremely irritating such that I only work on them with Windows, because, almost as soon as I mount the card in OS X, metadata files get sprayed everywhere.

Did you try excluding files that match that pattern? Like "--exclude '._*'?

LoneIgadzra

That doesn't really apply since, under OS X/HFS+, the metadata is part of the file. It's only when unarchived on a non-Mac filesystem that those files appear. (More precisely, I think they are created as part of the archiving, and when you un-archive on a Mac it puts the metadata back into the file.)

Barrakketh

LoneIgadzra wrote: »

That doesn't really apply since, under OS X/HFS+, the metadata is part of the file. It's only when unarchived on a non-Mac filesystem that those files appear. (More precisely, I think they are created as part of the archiving, and when you un-archive on a Mac it puts the metadata back into the file.)

So in other words, you didn't try it first? Because if it didn't work then we could go to deleting them from the tar file post-creation. That said, I can think if someone on another forum who would probably be able to answer that question assuming he created those tarballs I tested on OS X and not Linux (I helped test the Linux version of Jumpman :P).

Senjutsu

http://norman.walsh.name/2008/02/22/tar

LoneIgadzra

Awesome, thanks. (Reason I posted here was because I wasn't able to find anything with google and I know we have a few experts.)