Odd afp error when saving files

[David Ritter]

Hi all,

I have setup several FreeNAS based servers and have been generally very happy with their performance and ease of setup and use.

Several of my end users on Macs have informed me that they occasionally get an odd error message when saving files to their FreeNAS afp volumes.

This error usually happens with Photoshop but they indicate that it also happens with InDesign.

The error message usually reads like this;

'Could not save as "file name goes here.tif" because write access was not granted.'

Here is a screen cap of the message dialog.
http://i.imgur.com/RdlSGIA.png

I initially thought this might be due to an error in my permissions setup so I have my users connecting as one user. In the afp volume setup I have checked all the boxes in the default file and directory permissions setup. I have set the default umask to 000. The single user account I have them using is a local account not controlled by any domain controller. I have crowned the afp volumes so the one user account has complete ownership of the files and directories on the afp share.

The FreeNAS we are using is currently version 9.2.0. I have tested for this error on newer versions of FreeNAS and the issue still exists.

According to what I have read about setting up the afp volumes all this should allow my one user to have complete unfettered access to mounted afp volumes.

I have tested for this issue using Mac OS 10.6.8, Mac OS 10.7.5 and the latest Mac OS 10.9.2 - the issue occurs with all Mac OS versions I have tested.
When this error happens another error shows up in the console I have pasted it below.

Mar 14 12:57:07 phoenix afpd[29827]: ad_rtruncate("/mnt/phoenix-zfs/production/phx-vol6/*NEW WEB BANNERS/AUDIO EXPRESS/10.03.13/Dorsey 200x263.tif"): No such file or directory

Currently when this error happens my users have to save the file in a different location or with an altered file name. After this successful save they move the file back to here it belongs or they rename it in the Mac Finder back to the original name.

This error is not a consistent thing which makes tracking down the cause even more difficult.

Please let me know if I need to provide any additional info on this issue.

 

[dlavigne]

Mar 14 12:57:07 phoenix afpd[29827]: ad_rtruncate("/mnt/phoenix-zfs/production/phx-vol6/*NEW WEB BANNERS/AUDIO EXPRESS/10.03.13/Dorsey 200x263.tif"): No such file or directory

Does this only happen if there is a space in the file name?

 

[David Ritter]

I just checked with my users and they don't seem to remember this issue happening with files that do not contain spaces in the filename. It only seems to happen on files that contain spaces in the filename but not with all files that contain spaces in the filename.

When this issue occurs the current solution is to either save the file with a different filename or save it on the user's local desktop and then copy the newly saved file back to the server volume.

 

[David Ritter]

This morning this error (ad_rtruncate) occurred while an afp user was accessing (saving) a file that did not have any spaces in the filename or anywhere else in the path.

 

[David Ritter]

Today I stumbled across this related bit of information about netatalk.

http://sourceforge.net/p/netatalk/bugs/542/

 

[David Ritter]

Here is an update on this issue. I have no real solution but I'm putting this here in case anyone else has a similar issue.

I created a test server using FreeNAS 9.2.1.3 and migrated 100GB of test data to the new afp shares.

My users reported that they are still experiencing the save issue with Adobe Photoshop.

Out of curiosity I created an SMB/CIFS share and had a user try using smb to connect to and use this share.
My user reported that the same file saving issue still occurred on the smb share when saving from Adobe Photoshop.
I found a lengthy forum post about this issue on Adobe's forums. People have been reporting this error to Adobe since 2010

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3177992

One of the postings on that forum referred to a possible workaround.
http://blog.skynet-solutions.net/post/52968299699/photoshop-could-not-save-file-because-write-access-not

The issue seems to be with the OS X Finder creating icon previews on files and somehow locking the file so Photoshop can not have the access it expects when saving the file.

I am having my users try "working blind" when opening files in Adobe Photoshop. This means closing the Finder window that holds the file they are editing rather than leaving this window open in the background. This should prevent the OS X Finder from creating the preview icon on files. This preview setting can be disabled in the Finder preferences but this setting is saved on a folder by folder basis. Changing this setting on previously viewed folders on the FreeNAS volumes would involve changing thousands of folder settings.

The biggest issue I'm having with this problem is it is not consistent I can have one user that never experiences the issue and another user right next to them that experiences the problem dozens of times a day.

The OS X version does not seem to matter. We are using OS X 10.6.8, OS X 10.7.5 and OS X 10.9.2 - the issue exists with all these OS X versions.
The Adobe Photoshop version we are using is from Adobe CS 5.5 (that makes it Photoshop 5.1 for some odd Adobe reason). I really don't have a newer version of Adobe Photoshop that I can use for testing. My company has not dealt with the Adobe software subscription topic yet.