Server Connections Interrupted

Okay - Here are my results of extensive testing today - repeatedly copying my iTunes and iPhoto Libraries to the TimeCapsule (SMB and AFP) , to a D-Link DNS-323 NAS (SMB only) and to a Western Digital MyBook Live 3-TB NAS (AFP and SMB).

I had these copies going in all directions - two different Macs (iMac and MacBook Pro) - wired - all day long - but only to shares mounted via SMB - to my various NAS drives including the Time Capsule. There was not one occurence of the Disconnect popup during 6 hours or so of copying (iTunes library about 30 gig - and iPhoto about 12 gig). I disabled Time Machine backup during this testing to avoid having it confuse the test results.

In the middle of the afternoon the - I switched over to AFP mounted shares - I did an AFP mount on the MacBook Pro to the WD MyBook Live drive - copied the iPhoto library over to it. No popup. Then on the iMac - I did an AFP mount to the Time Capsule and copied the iPhoto library to the Time Capsule. Copy was successful - but within two or three minutes of the copy completing - the Disconnect warning dialogue popped up on the iMac (not the MacBook Pro) and continued popping up at the following times: 14:58, 15:31, 15:50, 16:00, 16:17, 17:48, 18:17 and 18:57. No messages in the TC log. No active transfers to or from the TC during the subsequent popups. Currently I have logging level set to 6 (Info) - now setting it to 7 (Debug) and will try again tomorrow.

Obviously my test results are pointing to the issue being with the Time Capsule and/or the firmware upgrade (since SMB all day long did not have an issue on the TC or the DNS-323 - with constant data transfer occuring over a wired connection - as well as AFP and SMB working fine to the WD MyBook Live).

I believe that Apple made some type of change in the AFP specification starting around 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). Not exactly sure what they changes were - but could be a factor here - meaning that Macs on the latest (and last) version of Snow Leopard may be seeing the impact of the AFP changes.

My MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are typically connected wirelessly and usually through the TC vs my other access points. This week I have the MacBook Pro wired (with Wifi disabled). I did initially notice some wireless issues with Lion - but those seem to have disappeared with OS X 10.7.2 - or at least I am not noticing.

I believe I now know how to reproduce the Disconnect popup - and hopefully logging level 7 may show something when the Popup occurs again.

~Scott

I am assuming that reverting to a previous version of the firmware is going to result in the LED continuously flashing orange beause of the detection of an available update? Can anyone confirm this? If I remember correctly - I believe the Time Capsule forced me to upgrade to the 7.6 firmware and wouldn't allow me to do much until I performed the upgrade.

Mine has been back to earlier version of the firmware for a day now..

No popups.. no server disconnected messages.. and so far still green..

Most messages you can just turn off.. perhaps after you upgrade and downgrade again it will leave you alone.

So with your testing it is pretty conclusive Apple bombed on this firmware.

That is good to know - that the LED is staying green after downgrading. I haven't decided to go back to the previous version just yet. I did not have much time to work on this today - but I did get the pop up - one more time today - on the same iMac - and nothing much was happening - as it was sleeping most of the day - and Time Machine backups are disabled.

I checked the log again (this time with logging set to severity level 7 (debug) - and still no additional info in the log. The only messages I see are the same level 5 messages that I always see. I was really expecting to see a lot more detail on other operations.

It should be noted - that the TC is only generating the popup when a share is mounted via AFP (the default) and not via SMB - at least in my case. I wonder if Apple is monitoring theses thread and is aware of the problem?

Since I have Apple Care - I can probably log a support incident - however - that can prove to be time-consuming. I will update this thread when I have more to report.

~Scott

Thanks all for an informative thread - I had this issue too, what with a log filled with AFP sessions closing and opening every two minutes or so. I've even heard the drive spinning up at night, after I'd logged off, shut down the laptop and gone to bed.

Tried switching channels, which put off the next occurance about an hour and a half, after which the every-two-minutes rate was back (really weird if you think about it, this change in behavior caused by a channel switch), and then I downgraded to 7.5.2 and now I have close to 12 hours without AFP incident - just normal rotation of TKIP key once and clock syncronisation every hour.

So, for my money: - the recent firmware version is bugged.

Thanks again.

🙂

I am also experiencing the same issue and have regularly seen the screen grab since the new firmware release.

I have just downgraded as suggested and hope that this will do the trick.

Thank you to everone who has provided information on this issue.

Hopefully Apple will correct the position ASAP.

OK after doing the disconnect and reboot, the message stayed away for five days. But it come back.

To reacap I downgraded the firmware after I was getting the message with the new firmware.

So it seems the firmware does not matter.

It's starting to look like a Lion issue for me.

Hi,

Using WiFi. 10.7.2

I have two TC and one AE, all have HD's attached and the issue seem to start when I did the FM in all airport, aftr downgrading it seemed to go away. But it did show again after a few days.

So last night I put the airports back up to latest FW and tried the disconnect method.

I have drives mounthed OK at the moment, I shall see how that goes.

If I get chance I shall run a cable and try with Ethernet to try and pin point if Lion WiFi bug.

I see the firmware bug via Ethernet moreso than Wifi. But it does occur on both. On Ethernet I can almost always produce the pop up disconnect warning by doing the following: mount a share on the time capsule (ago). Drag and drop either your iTunes library or iPhoto library to the share. As long as it is a large amount of data. Shortly after the copy completes - the disconnect popup will appear. It may even appear at the tail end of the copy. It will then continue to appear periodically for a number of hours - provided the share is mounted.

Also - I am not seeing the Lion wifi bug on any of my 3 macs. In the very beginning after installing Lion 7.0.- I believe I experienced some wifi instability - but after the 7.1 or possibly after 7.2 - the wifi connection seems to be quite stable.

OK connected with ethernet and set my machine copying my aperture lib,

Got home and the connection was lost, no message but the mounted volume was not on desktop, I was unable to see the TC drives at all, in fact I was not able to see the TC with Airport utility, rebotted TC and it come back up.

The backup seemed to copy about 200 gb or so be fore it dropped.

Going to repeat again over night.

I shall report back.

Interesting - when I do the copy my iTunes library is only about 22 Gig. Your copy stopped after 200 gig. When I get the failure - it is almost always several minutes after the copy completes. I don't lose the drive icon on the desktop and the TC seems to be active and mountable when I go to check it after the popup warning occurs. Even the finder window that was open at the time the popup occurred seem to be responsive. Other than the fact that the popup is displayed - I would not have any other indication that connectivity to the drive has been "temporarily" lost - and I never have to do anything to regain connnectivy.

The problem never occurs during a Time Machine backup. TM Backup always completes successfully and unmounts the TC immediately after. I am wondering if the immediate unmount of the the TC after TM backup is what is avoiding the popup disconnect warning? Just a thought.

Also I had shares mounted only via SMB - for several days - and never once saw the popup. It has to be something with recent changes to AFP combined with some behavioral change introduced on the Time Capsule by the latest firmware update. Additionally - I can mount a share (via AFP) to my WD MyBook Live - and I don't see the popup - under any circumstance (I believe I previously reported this a few days back).

~Scott

dont actually use my TC as a TM backup point (1 TB TC is not big enough)

As of this morninng the copy is still going. My Aperture Lib is just over 600GB and my iTunes is around 1.2TB

So far so good.... I shall report back over the weekend as I'm going to try and copy my iTunes folder, that will take some time to move if completes OK.

I went back to firmware v. 7.5.2 and the message disappeared. A few days later it reappeared. When I went to the AP Utility I saw that my AE had (magically since I am the only Admin) set itself back to v 7.6. No kidding.

It's the AP firmware update as I had no issues with Lion 10.7.2 (or previous itterations) prior to the Airport firmware update.

I have a WD USB external HD connected to my AE. IT does have "nergy saving" features so I am going to try connecting an "always on" USB drive. This may reveal if the sleep feature of the external drive is triggering the message.

I am about to go back to 7.5.2 - however - I have some additional troubleshooting results to report. What I am noticing is that the problem surfaces after a significant amount of data - such as >10 gig - has been transferred to or from the time capsule via an AFP-mounted share (the default). Within a few minutes after the transfer completes - the time capsule attempts to go to sleep and spin down the drive. If I watch the console for a few minutes after the transfer - I can see where the TC shuts down - and right at that point - the disconnect window pops up. There are also some unusal (and slightly concerning) message that appear in the console referencing an "invalid volume" or something like that. So it does seem to be related to the time capsule going to sleep.

If I watch the console at the end of a time machine backup to the time capsule - I see the same strange invalid volume errors - but I don't get the disconnect popup - because the Time Machine backup unmounts the TC as soon as the backup completes - but before the TC reaches its inactivity limit (of several minutes) and goes to sleep.

To complicate this a little bit further - I have also been experimenting with a WD MyBook Live NAS drive - which supports AFP as well as Time Machine backups. A couple of weeks ago I had been testing for the disconnect popup by copying large amounts of data to the MyBook Live drive via an AFP share - and I was not receiving the disconnect popup at all. Recently WD provided a firmware update to the MyBook Live drive - and now - if I copy the same large amount of data from the TimeCapsule to the MyBook Live drive (or vice-versa) I now get both the Time Capsule share as well as the MyBook Live drive share listed in the diconnect popup. So this is telling me that it is not just the TimeCapsule having this issue - because I am now seeing the issue with the MyBook Live drive. The important thing to note here is that when I see the popup for the MyBook Live - it is only when the tiem caspule and the MyBook Live have done a large data transfer from or to each other. The MyBook Live drive does not go to sleep as frequently as the Time Capsul does.

I will try again - with just the WD MyBook Live drive to see if I can get the pop up when referencing only the WD MyBook Live in a large data transfer - but without the Time Capsule in the mix.

I have seen the problem on Lion - as well as on Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I believe that 10.6.8 was when Apple introuduced changes in their AFP implementation.

~Scott