Synced files are invisible

[Michael McClain]

Any thoughts on why files synced from a Mac (13.3.1) to a QNAP (QTS 5.0.1) would be invisible? The file names have not changed (no . (period) before the name). All directories appear as expected and folder sizes report correctly. But files only appear when enabling 'show invisible files' in the Mac OS. 

This is not consistent with all of my syncs. I have several shares running on the QNAP and other syncs do not introduce this problem, only one. 

Permissions are enabled correctly and the problem is consistent across at least two different workstations attempting to sync the data. 

[Ira Cooke]

Hi Michael,

Is your source directory somewhat special (eg an iCloud directory or a directory inside your Library folder?).  Files inside some of these directories are made invisible by mechanisms other than the dot prefix. 

Best wishes

Ira

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[Michael McClain]

Thanks Ira.

The source directory is on a QNAP NAS and is being synced to a raid array on a 5,1 Mac Pro 10.14.6 using Softraid 6.2.1 controller. I'm guessing there's a lot of secret sauce in that mix that I don't understand. 

[Ira Cooke]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for this.  The actual hardware isn’t likely to be the issue, but more likely its how those files are managed by the system.  DropSync doesn’t actually change properties of files itself, but it can copy various extended attributes of files which make them hidden.  What is surprising here is that the files are not hidden in your source but are hidden in the destination.  My only guess for this is that somehow the folder containing those files (on the destination) got set to hide contents or that there is some other mechanism (eg a file creation mask) on the destination that will make the files hidden at the time they are created.  This might depend on the directory.  For example files created inside your Library folder might be set to hidden automatically.  These are mechanisms that would apply to your system and aren’t really in DropSync’s control.

If you want to investigate further you might want to check flags on your hidden files.  You can do this in Terminal with 

ls -lO filepath

where filepath is the path to the file you want to inspect.  It may have an attribute “hidden” which you can change using 

chflags nohidden

Best wishes

Ira

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