Dell PowerVault 720N, Command Reference Manual, Page: 269 / 606

Snapshots 9-17
For example, at the mount point of a filer file system, a directory listing looks like this:
ls -a
. .. .snapshot dir1 dir2
The same command entered in a directory below the mount point does not show the
.snapshot
directory; for example:
cd dir1
ls -a
. .. file1 file2
If you enter the
ls
command with the directory name
.snapshot
, you can see a listing
of the snapshots for the
dir1
directory:
ls .snapshot
hourly.0 hourly.4 nightly.0 nightly.4
hourly.1 hourly.5 nightly.1 nightly.5
hourly.2 hourly.6 nightly.2 weekly.0
hourly.3 hourly.7 nightly.3 weekly.1
If .
snapshot
were to show up in every directory, it would cause many commands to
work improperly. For instance, all recursive commands for removing files would fail
because everything below
.snapshot
is read-only. Recursive copies would copy every-
thing in the snapshots as well as files in the active file system, and a
find
command
would generate a list much longer than expected.
&,)6&OLHQW$FFHVVWR6QDSVKRWV
To CIFS clients, the snapshot directory appears only at the root of a share. For exam-
ple, if a user’s home directory is a share named bill that corresponds to the
/vol/vol0/
home/bill
directory, only the
/vol/vol0/home/bill/.snapshot
directory is visible. When
this user displays the contents of the home directory, the snapshot directory is dis-
played as
~snapshot
if the operating system supports long file names and as
~snapsht
if the operating system supports only short file names.
NOTE: The snapshot directory is visible in that it is displayed in a directory listing or
File Manager display if the client operating system is configured to show hidden files.
In each directory within the share, a snapshot directory exists but is not visible to cli-
ents. For example, if the client operating system supports long file names, the
applications on that operating system can use the snapshot at each level of the share
by using
.snapshot
,
~snapshot
, or
~SNAPSHT
as the directory name. You cannot,
however, display the directory name in any listing.