netOctopus's Transfer File/Folder command is used to directly transfer/install individual files from the administrator machine to any number of agent machines. This is different then netOctopus' other two major methods for file distribution, which use installer files launched off of file servers in order to install software on agent machines.
If your situation requires that you use use the Transfer File/Folder command in order to copy files to agent machines, you will need to keep a few operating system limitations in mind if you have a heterogeneous environment, with both Mac and Windows machines.
Generally, if you are deploying Windows files, whether from a Mac or PC administrator machine, you do not need to worry about OS compatibility issues. Similarly, if you are deploying Mac files from a Mac admin, you also do not need to worry about OS compatibility.
However, if your admin machine is a Windows PC, and your agent target machines are running any version of the MacOS, you may run into compatibility issues due to to special Macintosh file types that do not maintain their integrity on Windows systems without special effort.
The basic guideline to keep in mind is that you generally CANNOT reliably deploy files to a MacOS agent system from a PC admin using the transfer command. The only exception would be "flat" files such as movies, jpegs, MP3 files, plain text files, and files that are specifically saved in a cross-platform compatible format. You will NOT be able to deploy applications, extensions, control panels and similar files from a PC admin directly to a Mac agent using the Transfer File/Folder command."
There are two general kinds of files you need to be concerned about:
- MacOS files with a resource fork.
Files with resources forks include all MacOS 9 applications and executables, as well as many application document files, such as Word files. Since Windows files systems do not understand Mac resource forks, any Mac file with a resource fork that is moved to a PC will lose its resource fork and become corrupt. If the file is then transferred back to a Mac, it will not run and will likely not be what the user expects.
- MacOS X folder packages.
Folder packages are special folders on MacOS X systems which contain special metadata that the MacOS knows how to interpret. On MacOS X systems, folder packages appear to be single double-clickable applications. In reality, they are folders which may contain hundreds of files, each with specific metadata needed by MacOS X in order for the application to run properly. If a MacOS X package is transferred to a PC, it will appear as a regular folder, ad if it is then transferred back to a Mac, the essential metadata will be lost and the package will likely be unusable.
If possible, use a Mac administrator to transfer files to Mac agent machines. This will avoid all compatibility issues.
If this is not possible, you could package the files you need installed to the Mac agents into an installer using PackageMaker (included with MacOS X) or Installer VISE (included with netOctopus) and then run the installers from a server using the Execute Mac Install command or the Software Distribution System.
If this doesn't meet your needs, you can "protect" a Mac file of any type by encoding it into BinHex or Stuffit (.sit) format before transferring it to the Admin's PC. The file's attributes will be safe when it is in one of these protected formats, but after the files is later transferred to the Mac agent, it will have to be decompressed before it can be used (all versions of the MacOS have built-in decompression tool called Stuffit Expander).