Server Connections Interrupted

Point of clarification: I just re-read my post, and see that I typed TC when I meant TM, chalk it up to old age. I am running the Airport Extreme (not Time Capsule) with an external 2TB USB drive, partitioned for 2 TM volumes, and one storage volume. Not trying to run any streaming sources from that drive, it's all just backup in one form or another (including symlinks for iOS backups), all of which has worked just fine for a couple years except for these post-7.6 afp error popups. Reverting to 7.5.2 made them stop, but I sure would love to know why.

Must be getting time to retire, I am getting tired of working IT issues all day then coming home to work them on nights and weekends too! At least at work I can blame the users...;)

Hmm...that is intriguing, Michael

I have the suspicion that an Airport Extreme with an attached drive is functionally identical (in terms of the firmware/OS/software) to a TC...the only difference really is the physical connection of the drive (USB versus SATA or whatever the TC inbternal drive uses) and whatever management that imposes. If I were an overall Project Manager for both the TC and Airport Extreme that is certainly the way I would want things designed, for ease of maintenance and enhancements.

But are you positive that it was the reversion to 7.5.2 which made the errors disappear? The reason I ask is, if OS X was also upgraded at some point (which might possibly included a change to TM as well-unless Apple is different from anyplace else I know of not every single change in a release, and in particular a "minor" one, is identified at the user level)...maybe there were multiple changes in around the same timeframe which had an impact.

But I sure agree with your last sentence. I finally weaned myself off Windows to attempt to avoid exactly this type of extensive problem research and workarounds. While even the log messages were more annoyng than critical (the errors were not stealing enough cycles to produce any noticeable slowdown in the system) the drive partial spinups were alarming and unacceptable-"rotating rust" does not like continual changes of speed, and partials are particularly dangerous.

tessmar wrote:

But are you positive that it was the reversion to 7.5.2 which made the errors disappear?

Yes, since I only did the downgrade to 7.5.2 after reading this thread, and no other OS updates have been applied to any of my machines since the downgrade. My rule here (same as work) is to only change one variable at a time. And, as soon as I downgraded, the popups stopped. BTW, as nearly as I can recall, they began at 7.6.1, and got a bit more frequent when I upgraded to 7.6.3 just last week. And of course, I did several complete shutdown/reboot cycles for all devices before doing the downgrade, just to eliminate the possibility of accumulated digital lint being the culprit.

I can confirm that an AirPort Extreme on 7.5.2 will not exhibit the disconnection pop ups or disk spin up every 5 minutes or the DoReconnect console messages, whilst anything above that will. I was on it just last week.

My experience is that every single AirPort firmware version beyond 7.5.2 will exhibit this behavior when an external disk is connected via USB and such disk is mounted on a Mac. The behavior doesn't seem to occur if the disk is not mounted on any computer.

Perhaps we are making an unwarranted assumption here, and a question for Apple. The thread is about Time Capules and not specifically about Airport Extreme. While the firmware numbering seems identical and while the TC is an Airport Extreme plus a disk...do we know for certain that means that there is a single firmware program for both? I was assuming so, but...

I just re-checked and my TC is on 7.6.3, which I believe is the current firmware version for that device, and I do not get any of the error types. But, in response to both Menge and Michael, this is not an Airport Extreme (though it supposedly contains one)...and I do not have a USB drive attached to it. While I suppose I could connect one and check I am reluctant to do so (understandedly I think...never muck with sucess 😉).

Perhaps someone with a Time Capsule running Time Machine and also storing other data on it, with a USB drive attached, can report on their experience.

In the past few months I had a Western Digital USB2 External Drive attached to the USB port of the time capsule - and was copying data to an from it without any problem for a period of two weeks. In the past when I was getting the disconnect popup and repeated 5-minute partial spinup - I was also experience strange behavior with the (same) external WD drive attached to the USB port of the time capsule.

It is my understanding that a USB drive attached to a Time Capsule is not 100% the same (physically) as a USB drive attached to an Airport Extreme - although logically from a use standpoint - the interaction with the device appears to be the same. Apple does specifically state that Time Machine Backup is not supported when the backup destination is a USB drive attached to an Airport Extreme - but it "is" supported on a USB drive attached to a Time Capsule. This would be an indication to me that there is a slight hardware difference. They do say that storing files on a USB drive attached to either a Time Capsule or an Airport Extreme - is supported - just not Time Machine.

In the past I could trigger the disconnect popup as well as the 5-minute partial spinup - by just copying my iTunes library to the TC (at that time it was about 25 gig). The copy would complete successfully - but within a few minutes of completing the copy - the disconnect popup would appear on the Mac used to do the copy - as well as popping up on any other Mac that may have had the TC share mounted at the time - even though the share on the other macs was not being actively used.

When I was trouble shooting this problem a long time ago with Apple - I reverted back to 7.5.2 as well as the 7.5.1 firmware. At first - this seemed to have fixed the problem - but within 24 to 48 hours - the identical behavior would resurface. The behavior was the same on both my original Time Capsule as well as the replacement that apple sent me. It does (or did) appear that something in the process of reverting back to the prior firmware - cleaned out whatever was trigger the problem - but upon re-copying my iTunes library to the TC - I could easily reproduce the problem.

I am now starting to wonder if something in the makup of the data in the iTunes library - at the time - was causing the problem to trigger. As of November - when I upgraded all of my Macs to 10.8.2 and 10.8.3 (recently) - this disconnect popup is very rare - and I have to work very hard to reproduce it. I can no longer cause the 5 minute partial spinup. I did nothing to specifically "fix" this problem. Everything that I am now doing with the Time Capsule - is operationally the same as I was doing when I was having the problem.

I have also never experienced the data share on the Time Capsule truly disconnecting on it own - at least not while it was being actively used. No corruption of data has ever occurred.

I do see anywhere from 1 to 3 reconnect attempts - whenever the Mac wakes from sleep and the share was mounted prior to sleeping - but these reconnect attempts happen in a matter of seconds - and always resolve the connection. To me - this seems like somewhat expected behavior. I also experience the same reconnect AFP messages when I have an AFP share mounted on my Western Digital MyBook Live network drive - although with less frequency than the Time Capsule.

I also wanted to point out - that the Time Capsule has always worked flawlesslessy with Windows - and probably because the connection is done via SMB vs AFP.

I am truly hoping that DJ will report back some of the details that he obtained from Apple a few weeks back.

~Scott

I have noticed console messages suggesting problems similar to those discussed above. I seem to have gotten rid of the error messages, at least temporarily, by doing two things.

First, I went into the Airport Utility (6.2), unchecked the box to share my Airport discs, applied to reboot my Airport Extreme (an oldish one), rechecked the box to share my Airport discs, and again applied to reboot my AE.

Second -- this one, I must admit, is a little embarassing -- I went into System Preferences, Energy Saver, and unchecked the box to "place hard drives to sleep whenever possible."

FWIW, the console messages have not recurred since I took these steps.

I wrote:

... the console messages have not recurred since I took these steps.

I spoke too soon. Within two days, I get these error messages again:

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2.local KernelEventAgent[44]: tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2.local KernelEventAgent[44]: tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/NAS1', from '//jim%20marshall@Extreme._afpovertcp._tcp.local/NAS1', not responding

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2 kernel[0]: ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 97 on so 0xffffff801dc4c830

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2 kernel[0]: ASP_TCP asp_tcp_usr_control: invalid kernelUseCount 0

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/NAS1 prevTrigger 97 currTrigger 98

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: doing reconnect on /Volumes/NAS1

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: posting to KEA EINPROGRESS for /Volumes/NAS1

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Max reconnect time: 30 secs, Connect timeout: 15 secs for /Volumes/NAS1

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/NAS1

Apr 13 15:51:19 imac-2.local KernelEventAgent[44]: tid 00000000 found 1 filesystem(s) with problem(s)

Apr 13 15:51:20 imac-2.local KernelEventAgent[44]: tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

Apr 13 15:51:20 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Logging in with uam 13 /Volumes/NAS1

Apr 13 15:51:20 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Restoring session /Volumes/NAS1

Apr 13 15:51:20 imac-2 kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: get the reconnect token

NAS1 is the name I gave to an ordinary external drive USBed to my Airport Extreme. I do NOT use this drive for TimeMachine backups.

And, yes, the box to "place hard drives to sleep when possible" is still UNchecked in System Preferences, Energy Saver.

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.

louiexiv wrote:

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

Yah, well, that didn't last.

I believe the problem being fixed in Linc's post is entirely different from the problem in this thread. Although it was worth a try.

Hi - I have been following this thread for some time. I have similar log entries / symptoms but with AFP connections to a Synology NAS (DS413J). I am also getting disconnects affter large file transfers - More specifically when CrashPlan runs its daily changed file scan (My backup set is 850GB) once that scan finishes (sometimes during) I lose AFP connection to the 3 mount points with the similar log entries that others have mentioned above.

What is weird is that when this first started happening I blamed my Mac Mini and reinstalled 10.8.3 - that worked for a about a week and started again. So I blamed the hardware are replaced it, same result. I then tried testing this as virtual machine - same result. Oddly, I do not have the issue on my mid-2010 iMac.

I wrote an AppleScript (automated to run every 10 mins via Lingon) to check if the "CrashPlan" mount point was still mounted, and if not remount, send me an email and restart the CP service - the issue with that is that restarting CP causes it to re-scan which drops the network.

I have just switched to SMB to see if that makes any change, but am hoping to bump this thread in hopes that someone (DJ?) have some new information or news on this issue.