AFP Cant' connect issues

[bguernsey]

Using both OSX 10.6 and 10.7 we've been encountering intermittent issues connecting to an AFP share. Sometimes if you disconnect and reconnect your network on the mac, the share will again be accessible. Other times it won't.

Right now for instance, I'm archiving a 500+ Gig dmg file to an AFP share. I went into finder to check on the current file size and it couldn't connect to the very same share I'm currently writing too! When I tried to click to connect-as button, it explained that another process was using the share and so it can't unmount it. WTF? So I can't connect, but I'm currently connected....and I can't unmount because I'm connected. Makes absolutely no sense. I could drop to a shell and go to /Volumes/Sharename and see the files that way, but could not open the share from finder.

So I waited a while....then tried again, and voila, its back accessible via Finder....presumably after some kind of timeout somewhere.

This is a brand new QNap 789-Pro with the latest firmware installed (3.7.2) and so I don't know if this is the behavior everyone has come to expect or not. I know from experience with FreeNAS that we did not have these sorts of issues before. I'm wondering if it might have something to do with the MTU size I specified on the TenGig interfaces (9000 bytes). We have a Cisco switch that fully supports jumbo frames, but I'm not sure about the Apple stack.

I've searched the forums here and found many mentions of AFP connection issues, but nothing that presents itself as intermittent and self-recovering. I've read up on the older compatibility issues with Lion and QNap when the DHX2 option is turned off, and ours is not. I've also read about issues caused by old hidden apple files on the share...and that its fixed when you remove those files, however we've taken no action and the AFP share eventually comes back.

I'm also not seeing incredibly good data transfer rates over gigabit ethernet with the QNap attached by full duplex dual-10gigabit SFP+ cables. It seems our recv link utilization rates are around 23 MB/s with 1 client writing over AFP. I think I've seen rates upwards of 100MB/s with an rsync inbound.

Does anyone else see similar issues? I'm most concerned about the AFP shares just refusing connections. The transfer rates can be lived with for now, but since Time Machine is running over AFP, I need AFP to be solid, and its simply not. I don't recall having this issue with FreeNAS, which likely uses the same underlying open-source software (afpd and avahi- although now that I check, it looks like freenas is running mDNSResponder). So either Avahi is whacked, or I've got something bad in my configuration.

thanks...
Byron

[odiwan]

Hi

I have this problem....

since 3.7.0 QnapName(AFP) appears in Shares, but I can`t access, I need go to Connect to Server and type afp://XXX.XXX.X.X and then I can access to the shares

I back to 3.6.1 firmware and everything goes fine, the same in Lion or Mountain Lion, my NAS are TS-456 and TS-236

Sorry my english

regards

[bguernsey]

I've also noticed disconnects or hangs on afp shares with 3.7.2. For instance, today a time machine backup sat at 100% done with 2 seconds left indefinitely. That wasn't the only disconnect I've seen either- we've had a few now. There seems to be a problem with AFP on the QNap and the log on the QNap is virtually worthless for troubleshooting such issues. Is ANYONE having good consistent results with AFP on QNap?

[wuffles]

I've recently gone from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion and after that upgrade I'm getting extremely slow (next to no speed whatsoever) on AFP shares, including TimeMachine. I posted the screengrab below in another thread. Nothing else going on, only cause seems to be the upgrade to Mountain Lion.

Another machine in the house has been running Lion for a while, disconnects like were described in the first msg here, but not sure if slow network speeds were experienced in the same way.

[wuffles]

Should also have said, the speed issues only appear on the upload to the NAS, downloads from the NAS appear to be unaffected (of course, the disconnects certainly affect things).

[bguernsey]

How recent was it? I've not seen throughput issues with Lion or Snow Leopard. Is it possible that something else is going on- like Lion is reindexing your drive for spotlight while time machine is running?

[wuffles]

I had Spotlight disabled/turned off. Have tried with it re-enabled too.

[wuffles]

How recent was it? I've not seen throughput issues with Lion or Snow Leopard. Is it possible that something else is going on- like Lion is reindexing your drive for spotlight while time machine is running?

Just re-read what you had there. There weren't any throughput issues in Lion or Snow Leopard mentioned by me, just with Mountain Lion. Just the disconnects did appear as you described in Lion though.

[bguernsey]

I'm wondering if the disconnects are an issue with the new DHX2 authentication. I know you can go into Lion/Mountain Lion and reenable the old auth methods- its documented on apples support pages. Is this recommended (reenabling old auth methods and disabling DHX2) when you are running a mixed environment of Snow Leopard and Lion?

I've noticed the Mountain Lion thread discussing some of the issues with Mountain Lion: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=61766&start=15

I'll be following that too since eventually we will need to upgrade. Lion/Mountain Lion just seem to be steps backwards from Snow Leopard in terms of performance and reliability, so I haven't updated my personal machines to Lion yet. I was hoping Mountain Lion would work out some of the issues, but it seems that things are still broken.

[odiwan]

3.7.3 out and the problem remains

regards

[pwilson]

Using both OSX 10.6 and 10.7 we've been encountering intermittent issues connecting to an AFP share. Sometimes if you disconnect and reconnect your network on the mac, the share will again be accessible. Other times it won't.

This is a brand new QNap 789-Pro with the latest firmware installed (3.7.2)

"789-Pro" does not exist. If you mean the QNAP TS-879Pro, you might try installing "the latest firmware": TS-879Pro TurboNAS 3.7.3 Build0801

[...]
[Major Bug Fixes]
- Fixed OS X Mountain Lion Time Machine backup compatibility issue
- NAS may not be able to recognize some HFS+ external drives formatted by Mac OS X
[...]

Hope this helps...

Patrick.

[bguernsey]

You're correct- 879Pro (typo). The link above now returns a 404 not found. Was the firmware pulled back?

I just upgraded to 3.7.2, which at the time was the latest about 2-3 weeks ago. The Live Update page on the QNap itself never showed 3.7.2, so I guess it was never an "official" release. There should be a way there to select a checkbox for betas or hotfix releases.

Do firmware updates always disable optware? During the last update I noticed it turned off optware and I needed to reenable it.

thanks for the tip- hopefully the download reappears soon...

[pwilson]

You're correct- 879Pro (typo). The link above now returns a 404 not found. Was the firmware pulled back?

I just upgraded to 3.7.2, which at the time was the latest about 2-3 weeks ago. The Live Update page on the QNap itself never showed 3.7.2, so I guess it was never an "official" release. There should be a way there to select a checkbox for betas or hotfix releases.

Do firmware updates always disable optware? During the last update I noticed it turned off optware and I needed to reenable it.

thanks for the tip- hopefully the download reappears soon...

Try: TS-879Pro TurboNAS 3.7.3 Build0801 instead.

[odiwan]

I downgrade my NAS to 3.6.1 and afp is fine again

regards

[wuffles]

Is there a step-by-step solution someone can post? I've tried downgrading to 3.6.1 and it made no difference to my problem so have gone back to the latest (which also made no difference).

Have tried disabling the DHX2 authentication support and running the DHCAST128 mod but that's not made any difference. Copy speed is unusable, whether over Finder copy, TimeMachine or via command line.

Thanks in advance. Apologies if I am talking at cross-purposes with the DHCAST128 and DHX2 - I'm a little bit lost if I'm honest.