Getting the MBL to act more "file-server-ish"

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Previously, I had an external drive connected to a Mac Mini, shared, that acted as my file server and backup device.  It was really simple- drag and drop files there, done.  rsync, done.

Now I have a MBL and have all these problems:

When dropping files there under W7, I get all these complaints about file properties being lost.

When dropping files there under OSX Finder, it stalls for a few minutes as SMBD is busy churing away, and eventually leaves me with a splattering of appledouble files.

It might have a lot to do with the fact that the MBL has an ext4 filesystem that doesn’t have resource forks/metadata.

In any case, I want to get the MBL to run as seamlessly as before under both W7 and OSX.  Maybe I want to use Time Machine one day.

I already turned off Twonky via the web interface, but I still see that there is some kind of mediacrawler thing running.  Can I turn that off too?

On purpose, I am not installing any WD software on my computers and only access the NAS via the web interface, SSH, or Explorer/Finder via SMB.

I think one set of solutions involves repartitioning and having an HFS+ partition be the share, or maybe just having one big loopback mount.  This would involve compiling a bunch of kernel modules (which I haven’t done in a decade) and other warranty-voiding actions.  Is this the best way to go, or are there other simpler solutions?  All I really want it to do is sit there and hold files and backups for me.

2

I think it will be better for you to contact WD directly, they will assist you better. 

3

I am very slowly figuring out more things by myself.

EXT4 does indeed have resource forks.  It turns out that SMB under Mac works fine, but it is AFP access that splatters the appledouble files everywhere.  How can I get it to not do that?  AFP is needed by Time Machine.  I believe AFP should support resource forks / named streams, so I don’t know why these files are created.  It messes up syncing from the windows side because now there are twice as many files.

The slow file listing under Finder seems to be an OSX Snow Leopard problem.  If I access it thru terminal and type “ls”, the files fly by quickly.  If I type “ls -l” then it plods along slowly and smbd on the MBL maxes out.

I guess I don’t have to worry about running a different filesystem anymore, at least.

I am still interested in knowing which services are safe to turn off.  For example, I occasionally see ls and tally using a bunch of cpu.

4

Something to keep in mind. If whatever you do caused the MyBook Live NAS becoming unresponsive on the network, with no directy console, how are you going to debrick it?  At least on a computer with a screen and keyboard you can start-up Linux in a single-user mode with a command line to correct any mistakes and bring it back to life.