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If a Mac is using VA with an effective serial number of 800401 (ie without any of the 3 available upgrades) has anyone seen problems where files dragged out of zip files (using SparkFS v1.41) have their timestamps corrupted when they arrive on the normal HostFS drive? The timestamps seem to be set to the current date and time.

I have read the descriptions of the 3 upgrade fixes, but none seems to hint at this sort of problem.

I have searched this forum, and found no similar problems.

There was also a Beta version of HostFS released in February 2009, but I can find no actual release, ande again it gives no hint it might fix this problem.

What should I be asking the user to check?

The timestamps will be set to the current date/time. This happens because they are 'new' files, they have just been written to the Mac's hard drive. Don't forget that HostFS provides a way for RISC OS to use a filing system that's hosted on another underlying OS.

Surely they should be regarded as 'old' files, and written with exactly the same timestamp as before? It is effectively a pure RISC OS *Copy after all!

The existing date is used when you drag a file out of a SparkFS zip file on native RISC OS, or when using VA under XP, and even (normally) when using VA under MacOS.

Using the current date will cause users problems when 'Newer' is used as an option for copying installing software.

But for one Mac VA user that I know, it seems to be set to current date. Are you suggesting this is normal? It would seem to be failing to emulate a native RISC OS machine!

My suspicion is that there is something different about their VA setup, or how they are using it, to cause the difference.

HostFS is not a filecore filing system. It present a filing system managed by the host OS running on the machine. This can be either Windows or, as in this case, Mac OS X. How files are handled is down to the host OS, not RISC OS. Whilst files may be copied by RISC OS, the way the file is stored is determined by the host OS. HostFS will do its best to try and ensure that any RISC OS specific file information is retained, however this may not always be possible depending on the circumstances.

If it's found that some information, such as the date, is not being corrected after a file copy then I suggest unzipping any files to ADFS::IdeDisc4 rather than HostFS::Harddisc4. All versions of VirtualRPC ship with an ADFS harddisc image file which can be activated by following the instructions in Appendix 2 (ADFS HardDisc Emulation) of the VirtualAcorn user guide.

Yes, I am aware that using an ADFS 'IDE' disc will avoid this problem, which gives a bypass type solution.

However, from the information I have so far about HostFS on a Mac, I still think there is something distinctly odd going on. I will post my findings here when I am sure of them, but it will not be for at least 3 weeks as unfortunately I will be away from the Internet for about 3 weeks.

Perhaps it might help if I reply to a couple of parts from an earlier posting:



It is not a RISC OS '*copy'. Files are being transferred from a compressed archive, under the control of a RISC OS application, to the Mac OS X hard drive. Using Mac OS X go into the 'VirtualAcorn' folder in 'Applications'. Then into the 'VirtualRPCAdjust-SA folder'. There are several files/folders present, but the one we are interested in is called 'HardDisc4'. Open the folder as normal. This folder contains all the RISC OS files including the '!Boot' sequence. As you can see, whilst RISC OS sees this folder as a hard disc, in reality it's a folder on a Mac OS X filing system.



No, I am saying that HostFS will do he best it can to restore any RISC OS related file information. For example, RISC OS filing systems have a special location where it can store the hexidecimal filetype for a file. Other filing systems don't have this location. So in order to keep a record of the filing system a comma extension is added. For example a drawfile has a file type of &AFF. When a drawfile is saved to a HostFS mount a ',aff' extention will be added to the filename. HostFS performs the translation. If you look in the folder where the drawfile lives under RISC OS you see a file, with a Draw filetype. Look at the same file under Mac OS X and you will see the file has ',aff' at the end of the file name.