Sharepoint named with a forward slash “/” character.

[smphoto]

We are running OS X Server 10.4.11 on a Mac Pro Dual Core 3GHz Intel Xeon . The Server is used to host our websites.
In ServerAdmin, there is a sharepoint defined with the name “/”. It is the root of the startup hard drive. The startup hard drive has a regular name, it is just the share point that is using this character. As a result, whenever I mount this drive and try to use it within Dreamweaver for editing, Dreamweaver cannot save the files to it. Also, Dreamweaver will not let me define a site where any of the locations contain a “/” in the directory path.

FTP is not enabled in ServerAdmin.

This was setup by the IT Manager who doesn’t like to be questioned about his methods. I am wondering if anyone can think of a reason for naming a sharepoint with an illegal Unix character? Could it be more secure since this machine is on the web? Are there any serious implications of using the “/” as the name of the sharepoint? I would like to get this changed, but unless I have some valid reasons, the owner of the company will side with his longtime IT Manager.

[deemery]

For what it’s worth, the POSIX standard is very clear that the ‘/’ character is not legal in any filename, and therefore not a legal directory (or by extension sharepoint) name as a standalone character, either. The ‘/’ character is explicitly reserved for use as the pathname separator. The POSIX standard has 3 classes of characters in this respect:
those that are legal in filenames, a-zA-Z0-9 ‘-‘ ‘_’ (I think, I’m doing this from memory)
those that are illegal in filenames, ‘/’
those whose usage in filenames is not defined by the standard, ‘*’, ”’, ‘”‘, ‘#’, ‘?’
I forget which class ‘,’ is, I think it’s in the not-defined category.

Sometimes you can beat idiots over the head with standards conformance. But usually IT managers don’t care about standards, as standards only get in their way…

Good Luck!

dave

[smphoto]

Followup.

The IT Manager just informed me that when he setup the server, the share point of the server boot drive was already named with the name “/”. He did not give it that name.

Does anyone know if Server Admin sets the default share point name of the root of the startup drive to “/” ?

[Author]

Posts