symlinking a folder to a device?

[DisasterIncarna]

recently setup my emulated amiga to support my SMB shares on my NAS and Winblows PC, works fine, then got bored and smoothed over the process, instead of adding more copy/paste stuff into say my user-startup for each and every share individually, i just made a change to my user-startup that executes any and all scripts in a config folder, so now i just copy/paste a shares icon and edit the new config, nice and ordered/easy.

This is great and all, but as i am doing this with SMBFS, now i am facing the bigger issue of of these shares spamming the living daylights out of my device list in requesters (not that big a deal but looks messy) and ofc my workbench has tons of icons i dont want to see.

Ofc OS3.2 lets me hide these devices, so i tried making a "Shares" folder, and left it out on workbench, inside i simply made icons with the same names as the hidden devices, edited their icons, made them projects, set them to use IconX and edited a script that simply calls "OpenWin NAS1:"

This is where it goes horribly wrong, as the devices are hidden, OpenWin refuses/or is now unable to open a window for that device, it works if i unhide the devices, all the icons in the folder i made all open the devices they shortcut to, but once hidden it doesnt work.

So then i tried using makelink, except that doesnt work accross volumes, so i cant seem to link a folder to a device, cant link the icon info files as a workaround either, nothing i can think of works.

Is there some magic utility/thingymajig i havent thought of which will let me click an icon in a folder which opens the window for a device while those devices are hidden in workbench prefs?

[daxb]

I don't know about hidden devices but you may try to use WB (e.g. open a window) via its ARexx port called WORKBENCH.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

So then i tried using makelink, except that doesnt work accross volumes

Hardlinks only work inside the same volume. Use the SOFT keyword to get a softlink.

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by thomas

Hardlinks only work inside the same volume. Use the SOFT keyword to get a softlink.

Thanks this still fails when trying it accross volumes, linking a folder to a device, BUT weirdly enough i noticed that if i do the same thing but make the resulting folder appear in RAM:Shares, instead of SYS:Shares then it works, the folders appear like normal only now they are underlined.

midway thru my startup-sequence i now do this.

; Prepare RAM Shares folder and Left Out Icon
  Makedir RAM:Shares
  MakeLink RAM:Shares.info TO S:Shares.info SOFT
  MakeLink RAM:.backdrop TO S:Shares.backdrop SOFT
; END SMB Shares Folder

then after the LOADWB command i added this... (might throw this as a project icon in WBStartup)

  Makedir RAM:T/SMB-Scripts
  Copy SYS:Shares/Configs/~(#?.info) RAM:T/SMB-Scripts QUIET
  Type RAM:T/SMB-Scripts/Configs/#? > RAM:T/SMB-Devices
  Execute RAM:T/SMB-Devices >NIL:
  Delete RAM:T/SMB-Devices QUIET

this means i can have separate files for each share in my SYS:Shares/Configs folder, each get executed separately (similar to how our Monitor drivers are executed), heres an example config file.

RUN <>NIL: SMBFS Workgroup=WORKGROUP User=AmigaUser Password=AmigaPassword123789 service=//192.168.1.20/example-nas-folder DEVICE=EXA1: VOLUME=Example1: TRANSLATE=L:FileSystem_Trans/INTL.crossdos QUIET
Makelink RAM:Shares/Example1 EXA1: SOFT

Using this setup, i can now click into the shares folder which is left out of the ramdisk, and inside all my mounted SMB shares appear as folders, and best of all, unlike before the folders still function even with the devices hidden from workbench.

Thanks for the assist, 1 more quality of life feature added to my workbench setup...