Server Connections Interrupted

I tried the disconnect all users - powered off TC - it did not solve the problem. My problem seems to be predominatly that my wired Macs are having this issue more so than my wireless ones. What seems to trigger the message is when I have a share mounted on the TC - and I do a significant data transfer - either to or from the share in Finder - such as copying my iTunes library or iPhoto library - upon completion of the copy - or shortly thereafter - the Discconect message will pop up. A Time Machine backup - however - does not seem to cause this problem. But, once the message pops up - it will continue to pop up periodically (even without any data transfer taking place) and then eventually stops after 6 hours or so.

I have not yet tried downgrading the firmware. I am not (and was not) having wireless issues either before or after the firmware update (at least that I am aware of). I am not sure why continuously pinging a web address would resolve this issue - so I did not try that script.

Based on what I observed today - the message seems to occur only after a large copy operation to or from a share on the TC - while the finder has it mounted and while the share is open in finder.

Just out of curiosity - has anyone tried mounting the TC via smb:// vs the default of afp://? Or - has anyone tried mounting a share on another NAS drive (non TC) via either AFP or SMB to see whether the disconnect message pops up for those drives as well? I have two other NAS drives (one of which supports AFP) and the other does not. I will try this tomorrow - and see if I can get the message to pop up. If it does - that would indicate that the problem is Lion and not necessarily the TC firmware update. I will report back in a day or so - and possibly try the firmware downgrade.

I included a screen shot of the message that I get - to ensure we are all talking about the same issue.

~Scott

Tessmar:

When your power went off - your Mac would have legitimately lost the connection to the Time Capsule. If you had a share on Time Capsule open at the time of the power failure - you should have seen at least one popup notification on the MacBook Pro (which would have been running on battery) at the time the power failure occurred - unless you quickly shutdown the Mac before the popup had a chance to occur. Did you actually shut down the Mac - or was the Mac actually sleeping? When I read your initial post - I failed to pay attention to the fact that you had a power failure.

I'm assuming that your Time Capsule and everything else (other than the Mac) went down with the power failure - and that you are seeing repeated popups warning about the disconnect - even after everything has been powered back on normally (as well as the Mac having been restarted?). The repeated popup would be a problem - the initial popup was/would be expected.

I'm also assuming that you are using the Time Capsule as your primary router - as well as using it with Time Machine - to back up your Mac - and that you are storing other (non-backup related) files on the TC drive - which you are backing up once a day (using Carbon Copy Cloner) to your external Seagate firewire drive attached to your Mac? Just checking to make sure that I am clear.

I think you should monitor things for a few days to see if the popup continues - (after you have made sure that everything is freshy rebooted) and also be sure to mount a share on the Time Capsule on the Mac. The popup won't appear unless the Mac thinks there is an active share to the Time Capsule and either falsely or correctly detects the loss of that connection.

I think you should hold off on renaming the Time Capsule - as not to introuduce new variables into troubleshooting the popup.

When you do decide to change your Time Capsule name - you would open Airport Utility 5.6 - select the time capsule - click Manual Setup on the Summary Tab - the first item listed will be Time Capsule Name - you want to be sure that you are chnging the name of the Time Capsule itself - and that you are not changing the Wifi settings and not changing the name of the Data volume on the Time Capsule. To place to change the name is on the second tab which is labled Time Capsule.

Here you can type in a new shorter and more simple name for you Time Capsule. The Time Capsule will reboot after you change its name. Once you have change the Time Capsule Name - you will need to go into Time Machine and reselect your newly reamed time capsule device - as the backup destination.

Here is screen shot - where it says TC01 - that would be where you would type in the new name of your Time Capsule.

It sounds like you were trying to use the guided setup rather than the manual setup - and that is why it was telling you that your Time Capsule is protected by a password. if you are new to the Mac and Time Capsule - you might want to be very careful about making change to the TC setup until you are more familiar with Airport Utility and the Time Capsule.

~Scott

Ah ha! I had to first click on "New from Clipboard" in "Grab," and then when I clicked on "Save" it asked me to select a format, wherein I could choose "jpeg" which then the camera icon in the "Post" panel would allow me to upload. Phew. At any rate this is the mysterious change that occurred this AM. I have no idea why. BTW...the names were chosen by OS X at the time of setup as I would not use personal information and had no idea this was even there until today...and I gho by "Marty" and not my legal name anyway!

I have not renamed the local hostname either back to its original setting or to anything else. I'm not sure what, if any, difference it makes anywhere in my network. Would the change mess up my "Home Sharing" in iTunes, for example?

I just linked to the TC iTunes libratry with my iPhone. It did connect but doesn't look right. Some items that I can see on the Mac I can't on the phone. Next I'm going to check the backup copy on the Seagate. All of this is very strange behavior indeed.

Following my previous post and the two by Scott, I have done a little more research and note changes in my current experience.

All Apple TCs, AEs, and the AEBS are all now on firmware7.5.2. So far, the Server disconnect warning has not reappeared at all. However, that maybe because it is a holiday and I am not using the system long enough, as Scott noted, the error message appearance behavior has changed, not gone away.

Another factor I omitted, all the TCs are signed in as partof the login process; System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items, previous, to the firmware upgrade, they had been logged in as part of the Finder Connect Server process.

Signing in to the TCs as part of the Sign In process causes a Finder window popup for each TC minimizing these Finder windows leaves them in the dock. After a period of time they disappear!

Clicking on a TC’s dock icon while it is still in the dock gives me access to the TC very quickly, after the icon has disappeared, Ihave to go through the Finder where the TCs show up in the Shared section. Clicking on a TC there takes some time for the files and folders to appear. Clicking another folder soon after brings all files and folders up almost immediately.

The behavior of the TC is similar to another NAS device I had where it went into an energy saving mode and powered down the disks and the disk[s] had to spin up when a request was madeto them. I don’t see an option in the TC menus to select an energy saving mode or control settings.

But on this Apple Site,

http://www.apple.com/ca/environment/energy-efficiency/

there is a description of a “Wake on Demand” service on AEBS devices and TCs:

“… Bonjour Sleep Proxy running on your AirPort base station or Time Capsule and the Wake on Demand…. “

I had a NAS a while back that would go to sleep in an Energy saving mode. If I set the threshold for energy saving incorrectly, it would go into energy saving and appear to the DHCP server to disconnect from the network.The energy saving settings on that device were manually configurable; I don’tsee any energy saving settings in the TC menu that can be changed.

Going into an energy saving mode may also explain why the TC icons disappear from the dock after a period of time and I have to access them through the Finder and the files and folders take time to appear but are then immediately available for a period of time.

If the DHCP server in the AEBS is treating a TC in energy saving mode as disconnected that could also cause our warning message to appear. If the TC failes to Wake on Demand when the AEBS tries to access it would also result in it appearing to be disconnected.

M

I have just "downgraded" one more time to the 7.5.2 firmware to see if I can eliminate the popups. I am expecting to still see the disconnect popup initially after the Mac wakes from sleep - but not after copying significant amounts of data to the Time Capsule.

What I have observed after all of this troubleshooting is that when the Mac wakes from sleep on Lion (10.7.2) the network connections are not immediately re-established - resulting in Safari thinking it is not connected to the internet (whether via ethernet or wireless). This could very well be the cause of the post-sleep wakeup disconnect popup for shares mounted in finder. The Applecare tech did indicate that the delay in reestablishing network connections in Lion is a known issue that is supposed to be fixed in 10.7.3. In Snow Leopard (any version) the network connections are reestablished immediately upon login after wake from sleep - or the desktop appearing is delayed after successful login until network connections are re-established (just a guess).

I am going to test whether it will make a difference if a wait a few seconds after waking the Mac from sleep - but before completing the login process - to see if the delay between wake and login allows network connections to be established - before anything that is actually checking for loss of network connections actually runs. On my Macs - I have it set so that user/password must be entered after resuming from sleep or screensaver. I will also test whether disabling the password requirement upon resume from wake or screensaver makes any difference as well.

Also - I thought I would point out here that once you install Airport Utility 6.0 (an update that should now be appearing) - you will be presented with the graphical Airport Utility that is nearly identical to the Airport Utility app for the iPhone and iPad. A number of features of the previous airport utility will no longer be available - and you may find this to be a bit frustrating. Some of the features you will no longer see are: (don't despair while reading this long list - there is a solution for it at the end).

1) No ability to specify NTP time settings.

2) No ability to control whether the LED flashes or stays solid.

3) No ability to specify or update the location information for your Airport device.

4) No ability to view the log or change any logging settings.

5) No ability to view or set IPV6 settings.

6) No ability to specify SNMP settings.

7) No ability to manage profiles.

8) No ability to see or manage the older 802.11g Airport devices.

9) No ability to use the "Add Wireless Clients without a password" (the function that turns the status light blue).

10) No longer any tab for USB printers (printers can still be attached to the USB port and will work).

11) No option to disconnect all users for Time Capsules.

12) No option to archive the Time Capsule disk to USB drive.

13) No ability to view the Airport device status on one screen - you must click around and hover over the various icons in the graphical view to get specific information about each airport device and wireless clients.

14) No ability to allow/disallow ethernet clients when airport (express) device is used to provide wireless connectivity to an ethernet wired device. This functionality will work by default - there are just no settings for it.

15) No ability to allow/disallow a wifi network to be extended.

16) To upload prior version of firmware - you have to hover over the currently displayed firmware version and hold down the "option" key to get a list of other firmware versions to upload.

17) To go directly into detailed settings for an airport device - hold down the option key and double-click the device you want to configure.

For the most part - it appears that Apple has removed all of the advanced features of airport utility - probably in an effort to make the configuration process less overwhelming for a basic user - and I can see why they would want to do this. Most of the items in my list are not "necessary" items for the average user.

Now - for those that are upset by the loss of functionality in 6.0 - there is a Lion-specific full-featured version of Airport Utility (version 5.6) that you can download and install alongside version 6.0. Airport Utility version 5.6 is only for Lion - and will provide all the features that were taken away in 6.0. After you download 5.6 - just click on the dmg file to install version 5.6 and you will have a second Airport Utility icon in the Utilities folder.

The link for the Airport Utility 5.6 is:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482

~Scott

Hi Richard,

To clarify - this thread is focusing on a popup message (which indicates Server Connections Interrupted) that appears periodically when a Mac has a share mounted in finder via AFP (the default) to a folder on either a Time Capsule internal drive, a Time Capsule with an external hard drive attached to the Time Capsule's USB port, or to an external hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme Base station via the AEBS USB port. The popup became more prevalent after the 7.6 and 7.6.1 firmware release for the Time Capsule and AEBS - and seems to be further impacted by changes in Mac OS X as of 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) and later 10.7.x (Lion). Some people have reported that reverting back to the 7.5.2 firmware resolves this issue. In my own case - I see the popup message on all versions of the TC firmware that I have (7.5.1, 7.5.2, 7.6, and 7.6.1). If I revert my Mac back to Snow Leopard (10.6.4 or 10.6.3) - the popup goes away - however - rather than displaying the popup - the Mac will just silently eject the share - so it the past the problem was happening - it probably just went unnoticed. OS X 10.6.8 and later seems to be doing a better job of detecting and reporting the "perceived" disconnection and now it is being noticed.

In my own experience I am not encountering any loss of data or any failures in the middle of copying files to or from an AFP share to the Time Capsule. The popup seems to be triggered only after a significant amount of data (multiple gigabytes) is copied to or from the drive - and the popup disconnect warning seems to appear a few minutes after a large data transfer (copy) has completed. At first it appeared to be tied to when the Time Capsule would spin down the drive (due to inactivity) - but closer examination disproved this theory somewhat. Even though the popup appears - the share still remains active and is usable. The popup does not occur when I mount a share on the Time Capsule via SMB (e.g. using the go-connect-to-server option specify smb://TimeCapsule).

This problem does not seem to impact Time Machine backjups at all. Time Machine backups continue to work flawlessly - and I suspect that although Time Machine is connecting to the Time Capsule via AFP to perform the backup - the popup does not occur because as soon as Time Machine completes the backup - it ejects the share - before the condition that causes the popup has a chance to occur.

I am sure that Apple will get this problem corrected - and I know they are working on it beause I have an open case for it with AppleCare - and they do periodically check back with me. This popup issue should not deter you from getting a Time Capsule - as (in my opinin) it is still the best NAS device available for reliably backing up a Mac and providing you with a dual band reliable wifi access point.

For your own scenario that you have described - I would suggest keeping one (or both) of your AEBS's and add a Time Capsule. You should keep your existing AEBS as your router (attached to your cable modem). You then want to locate your Time Capsule in an area where it will provide the best wireless access (due to the short range on the 802.11n 5GHz). You should then create a "roaming" network with your two AEBS's and new Time Capsule. You can also connect any spare USB drives to the USB port of each of your AEBS's and effectively turn them into network drives.

In a nutshell - the roaming network employs multiple wifi access points (all sharing the same network name and password) - connected to your main router (in this case the AEBS) via ethernet. Your devices (laptops, etc.) will connect to whichever access point (AEBS1, AEBS2 or TC) has the best signal - seamlessly. You would set your AEBS that is connected to the cable modem in Router mode and enable the DHCP server. You would then "create a new network on AEBS1". You would then connect the WAN port of AEBS2 and WAN port of the TC to one of the 3 ethernet ports on AEBS1. You would then configure both AEBS2 and TC in "Bridge" mode (no router or DHCP capability enabled) - and create a "new" network on both AEBS2 and TC with the same network name and password as AEBS1 (your router). Now you have a roaming network and multiple wifi access points - all appearing to be the same wifi network. To determine which or your 3 access points a device has connected to - you would need to open Airport Utility and try to determine via MAC address which wireless devices are connected to which access point.

Note: If you are in an apartment or relatively small living area - setting up a roaming network may be ineffective due to the small space. Roaming networks are more effective in larger larger living spaces where there are multiple floors where there are structural obstructions such as walls and floor where having an access point on each floor (basement, first floor, 2nd floor) makes more sense.

Something you should note: Although you can attach an external drive to the USB port of an AEBS or to a Time Capsule - and effectively create a network drive - Apple specifically states that using Time Machine Backup with USB drives attached to base stations is not supported and may not be reliable. I have done this myself (in a test scenario) and not encountered any problems - but I would rather not risk corrupting an important backup.

Here is a link describing how to set up a roaming network (and other network setups for the Time Capsule and/or AEBS). I think you should keep all your components and try to make the best use out of each.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4145

~Scott

I am having the exact same issues as you. I posted a new question about this before I saw this very long thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4264900?answerId=19465712022#19465712022&ac_cid=op123456#19465712

If you have a time capsule, and are experiencing "server disconnected" error messages after having file shares open for long periods of time, PLEASE submit a bug report.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/timecapsule.html

Even if you aren't experiencing server disconnected error messages - if you could plug a USB drive into your time capsule, connect to it through finder, and wait 24 hours, then open terminal and run:

sudo syslog -w 300

I suspect you will see the afpfs_DoReconnect messages are appearing every 5 minutes. This is definitely a bug in the TC firmware, not 'normal behavior', as the Apple support tech said it was, and should be elevated as the product does not do what the box says it does.

Solundir -

I too am frustrated. PLEASE submit a bug report at http://www.apple.com/feedback/timecapsule.html and note that tech support said the behavior is 'normal' and did not help you. We need more than just a handful of complaints for them to look into the problem.

However, since I followed Linc's instructions (and explanation) here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4213550?answerId=19289254022#19289254022

to delete the following file:

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.afpstat.plist

and rebooted, I have not seen any of these AFP messages in my console.

My boyfriend did a little sleuthing and found removing the following file will get rid of these messages. We've been running this change on our computers for the last month or so with no ill effects.

/System/Library/LoginPlugins/FSDisconnect.loginPlugin

The following steps should sort you out:

1. Click on the spotlight icon (magnifying glass) in the upper right of your screen
2. Type in 'terminal'
3. Click the 'Terminal' icon (black with white border) under applications
4. Type in the following command and hit enter: 'sudo mv /System/Library/LoginPlugins/FSDisconnect.loginPlugin /System'
5. It will prompt you for your user password. Type it and hit enter again
6. Reboot

This just moves the plugin so you can restore it again if needed.

Getting the same behavior still:

• iMac running OS X 10.8.2 connected via Ethernet to Time Capsule (firmware 7.6.1)
• MacBook Air running OS X 10.8.2 connected via Wi-Fi to Time Capsule
• Only after connecting a portable USB Western Digital (WD) 1 TB HDD (My Passport for Mac) to the Time Capsule
• Get the "Server Connections Interrupted" popup for the USB WD HDD, with option to either "Ignore" or "Disconect". If I ignore, I can still access the WD HDD.

Thanks Scott. For your second item, I'm unfamiliar with AFP, so I doubt my USB WD HDD is mounted the same as yours. I'll need to investigate AFP mounting...

For your thrid item, based on your input, I'm now not so sure I'm actually even backing up my data from the USB WD HDD to the TC. The WD "My Passport for Mac" is listed in the "Available Disks" lists when I click the "Select Disk..." button from the Time Machine preferences so I could potentially reverse the backup source/destination (maybe). I need to investigate:

1. Whether TC can back up from a USB HDD to begin with, and if not
2. How to share an iPhoto Libary between 2 Macs and have that library backed up to a second location

-Matt

My Mac Book Pro 15" is a Mid 2010 - No issues with it. It would be really interesting if we find out that the "name" of the TC is culprit. Since I am not having the problem anymore - I need to think twice about trying to make it happen again. One has to also think carefully about opening an Apple Care support indicident or reporting a bug on bugreport.apple.com - because if Apple acknowledges the problem - they typically will take up a lot of your time having you send them logs and basically do a lot of testing and troubleshooting.

I'm still maintaining the following opinon of the problem:

• This was introduced in Snow Leopard 10.6.8 - and something changed with AFP in that update.
• A firmware update for TC (7.6) was released around the same time as the 10.6.8 Snow Leopard update - and was possibly erroneously blamed for causing the problem. I still had the problem even after reverting back to 7.5.1 firmware.
• The problem seems to be triggered by copying data across an AFP share - and a sizeable amount of data.
• It's related to the AFP share being left open/connected (which is a typical and expected use case scenario).
• The problem occurs much more frequently with an AFP connection to a Time Capsule vs an AFP connection to another Mac or Network drive - but it does happen on non-TimeCapsule shares.
• When multiple Macs have an open share to the TC - the popup will occur on "all" of the Macs - not just the one that triggered the popup.
• Time Machine never has the popup problem - because Time Machine opens the share - uses it - then immediately closes it - before the popup has had a chance to occur.
• The configuration of the TC (as router, bridge, wifi, wired - with or without USB drive attached) - does not seem to change the popup occurence in any way.
• The only time you should leigitimately see the popup is when on Wifi - and you go out of wifi range - or wired and you pull the ethernet cable. Prior to 10.6.8 - loss of wifi connection did not pop up a warning - it just quietly disconnected the share.

Please - by all means - try changing your the name of your TC to something simple and let us know if you see the popup anymore. If it's going to happen - it should happen within 24 hours.

~Scott

I believe this thread addresses my situation too - if I'm allowed to consider my wireless Seagate GOFLEX HOME drive a server (which it is, isn't it?). If it is a duplicate of an existing problem report, I apologize - and I'll abandon my pursuit of an answer on this thread.

• A) BASIC PROBLEM: My Goflex_Home (network-connected drive) won't stay continuously connected and drops out soon after I establish a connection. Very frustrating and makes this device almost completely undependable/useless.
• B) BASIC OBSERVATION: The same Goflex_Home stays continuously connected and works flawlessly.

Difference between "A" and "B"

1. A scenario is when accessing drive through the MAC (running Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
2. B scenario is when accessing drive through Windows 8 B U T
3. Both scenarios involve using the SAME COMPUTER to access the drive while running VMWare Fusion. This behavior continues as described in "A" regardless of whether I'm running VMWare or not.
   In other words, it just doesn't work well when being used in the MAC OS environment.
   DO YOU DRAW THE SAME CONCLUSIONS??

There must be some deficiency in the native MAC OS (or the Seagate MAC drivers).

In summation, I can use this device without issue in the Windows environment. Fortunately, I am running VM so that I have that option available to me, but I'm not happy with this restriction. BTW, as I recall, this device worked perfectly (in both scenarios) prior to my installation of Mountain Lion, hmmmm.