9.1.1 AFP sharings lossing directory contents

[sparenton]

Hi,

We're using Freenas for quite a long ime now, and we keep having one trouble, that concerns mac users : When using the afp shares, now and then, they loose the content of the directory. The content isn't really gone, because it can be seen/reached/written with the CIFS sharings. The problem is just the Through the AFP sharings, the mac users can only see the directory, but not the content (look like an empty directory).

I've looked at some logs (/var/log), but didn't find anything relevant rgarding afp problems... so my first question would be : what is le relevant log file to look ?

The other question is what can i do in order to make afp more stable (not saying that it's not functionning everywhere else, but at our place, it's a little bit unstable)...

best regards

 

[cyberjock]

Here's some tidbits that might help you long-term:

1. Sharing the same files and directories with more than 1 protocol is a recipe for disaster. Each protocol's service/daemon handle's its own file locks. So using AFP and CIFS is bad because anything you do inside one won't be known to the other. This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title.

2. AFP is kind of a hackjob. According to Mac users in this forum AFP is going away with the next MacOS update. So to be honest, I'd just migrate to CIFS and be done with it now.

3. As an aside to #1, if afpd is caching its own info and assuming that no other service(such as CIFS) is changing files, then I wouldn't be surprised with seeing the exact scenario you are in.

Yes, AFP is "supposed" to be faster than CIFS on a Mac(and it often is), but with all the AFP problems people have had in the forums, if I had a Mac I'd still use CIFS because its far more supported across all OS platforms. A well designed CIFS based server can perform just as fast as AFP. It's just a matter of not using 5+ year old hardware and then expecting Gb saturation speeds.

 

[Pete]

Small correction: AFP is not "going away" with Mac OS X 10.9 but is going to be replaced with SMB2 as the default file transfer protocoll. Huge difference.

There are many reasons to stay with AFP in a Mac environment, at least for the time being, but the main reason for me would be the indeed worse real life performance of CIFS (perhaps mainly due to its single threaded nature) compared to AFP on a NAS that was designed to be energy efficient (e.g. running on an E-350), and I am guessing this will not improve significantly with a more recent implementation of the latest SMB2 protocoll (Samba?) in FreeNAS, will it?

 

[cyberjock]

Small correction: AFP is not "going away" with Mac OS X 10.9 but is going to be replaced with SMB2 as the default file transfer protocoll. Huge difference.

Ok. Even at that, many people will simply start using CIFS because its the default. But in any case, there's plenty of other reasons to avoid AFP.

There are many reasons to stay with AFP in a Mac environment, at least for the time being, but the main reason for me would be the indeed worse real life performance of CIFS (perhaps mainly due to its single threaded nature) compared to AFP on a NAS that was designed to be energy efficient (e.g. running on an E-350), and I am guessing this will not improve significantly with a more recent implementation of the latest SMB2 protocoll (Samba?) in FreeNAS, will it?

Nope. Performance won't improve with the SMB2 protocol(which is samba). In fact, that's the default for Samba and has been for at least 20 months.

Yes, the E-350 is definitely a performance-limiting CPU for FreeNAS servers. They are low power, and they also give correspondingly low performance. Your only real option is to do avoid some of the high demanding single threaded services(which CIFS definitely falls under). Most people in this forum would argue that your limitations in not being able to utilize CIFS are your own fault for going with such a limited CPU.

If you search the forums afp seems to cause the most problems if you look at problems that appear to be protocol based issues and not user configuration issues. And as I said before, afp is apparently a hackjob. Couple that with the fact that sharing your files over more than 1 protocol has corrupted many user's files and I'd prefer to stick to a protocol that is supported across all OSes. And that means afp is off the table.

But hey, if you chose to go with a low powered solution such as an Intel Atom or E-350 beggars can't be choosers, right? Anytime someone tries to claim they used "green" NICs, "green" network switches, and "green" CPUs, they typically end up selling themselves WAY short and regretting their purchases later.