Server Connections Interrupted

To Tuzarupa - I have the problem on 7.5.1, 7.5.2 and 7.6 (haven't tried 7.5). For me I can produce the problem on Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and Lion 10.7.2. (4 different Macs - wired and wireless). I also have the issue when an external USB drive is attached to the TC. My time capsule has always been in bridge mode and wired to to the rest of my network - so yesterday and today I've been testing with Ethernet out of the picture entirely - Basically the Time Capsule as it's own wireless network - nothing plugged into the ethernet port and the TC acting as a router - (but there is no internet connected to it). In this configuration I can access the TC wireless directly to its own Wifi - I still get the popup - but now only after the Mac wakes from sleep - after having written at least 3 gig of data to the share prior to sleeping.

I still don't have the replacement TC yet (I will explain that in the next post). In preparation for exchanging the TC at the apple store - I copied all my backups off the TC and reset the TC to factory defaults to remove my settings (left the firmware on 7.6). I then used the "erase" option in Airport Utility to clear off the drive (although not securely) - and rename the volume back to Data.

Upon returning home last night with my same TC - I set it back up again. Somehow erasing the drive (which had never been done since initial setup) has appeared to make an improvement in the problem - as I don't believe I am getting the popup "out of nowhere" - I only seem to be getting it after waking the Mac from sleep. I haven't tried reverting back to 7.5.2 since "erasing" the drive yesterday. It might be worth a shot.

~Scott

Adam: I've tested with two different WD external drives on the USB port of the time capsule. A 1.5 TB WD MyBook and a 1 TB WD MyBook Premium with raid. I see the same beahvior with both. These drives both work fine attached to the Mac directly via USB or Firewire - and sleep just fine when on the Mac.

Update - I still have not received a replacement Time Capsule from Apple. Both of the Apple Stores in my local area were completely out of Time Capsules (both replacement and new). I had to contact AppleCare and they are now shipping me a replacement third-generation 2TB Time Capsule. It's coming via Fedex and could be here as early as tomorrow.

Anyway - for those that may not be aware - if you have an active applecare agreement on at least one Mac - your Time Capsule, Airport Express, Airport Extreme is covered by that applecare agreement - provided that the following conditions are met - 1) the device was purchased two years of less from the start data of the Mac's applecare agreement 2) the devices was purchased anytime during the duration of an active applecare plan. So - this being said - somebody with a Time Capsule that is just short of 2 years old - could by a new Mac and an applecare plan for the new Mac - and get the warranty on the TC automatically extended for 3 more years.

Also - I discovered a few days ago - that the only way that you can actually even "talk" to apple is if you have an active applecare plan on a covered product.

I have posted a couple of times to this thread relating to the networking side, not the drive compatibility as described.

I have had to upgrade all my Time Capsules and Airport Extreme and Airport Express devices as I came home to find them down complaining that a required firmware upgrade was required, all were on 7.5.2 and upgraded to 7.6 as a result.

I replaced the DHCP and network management duties of the Airport Extreme with a network security device; it is only functioning as a Wireless Access Point now. The Server Connections Interrupted errors started within an hour or so of the changes.

I decided to have the Airport Utility open on my desktop to see what it reports when the error popups start appearing. The popups started appearing but the Airport utility provided no error condition. This would seem to isolate the problem to the Time Capsules and the way they manage spin up and spin down of the drives, which should not be bound to the ability of the firmware to keep the device connected to the network.

AppleCare actually overnighted a replacement Time Capsule last Thursday - and I received it in less than 24 hours - quite impressive !!!

However, the replacement Time Capsule was identical to my existing Time Capsule - a 2TB 3rd Generation. It shipped with 7.5.2 firmware. I kept it on 7.5.2 for about a day. The disconnect popups still occurred but with very low frequency and most of the time they occurred only once after any Mac with an AFP-mounted share would wake from sleep - and no repeat again. I also had the existing time capsule set up as well - but on 7.6 firmware - identical behavior.

Somehow with all the resetting and reinitializing of the two TC's - the frequency of the problem has diminished - with the only difference being the fact that both Time Capsules were completely erased and reformatted as well as reconfigured. It is becoming harder for me to reproduce the popup - on both Time Capsules.

I use my Time Capsule in bridge mode - and have always used it that way. Out of curiousity - I have tried every configuration under the sun - including using the TC as a router - plugged directly into my cable modem in the basement and even setting it up as a stand-alone wireless TC - and even going to the extent of setting it up to distrubute a range of IP addresses - with my main router redirecting the DHCP server request to the DHCP server on the TC. For this to work - I had to use a LAN port (and not the WAN port) on the TC. The DHCP part worked just fine. Still - the same results - which is now only an occasional popup after wake from sleep.

On the following day I upgraded the replacement TC to 7.6 - still identical behavior.

I then decided to install an earlier version of Snow Leopard (10.6.3 and 10.6.4) onto an external drive and boot up my MacBook Pro and MacBook Air (with 10.6.3 and 10.6.4 - respectively) - and without applying any updates - to be sure to keep OS X earlier than 10.6.8 (where I know the problem will occur). Had I realized that you can install Snow Leopard directly to a USB or Firewire drive - I would have done this much earlier.

I mounted an AFP share on the TC from 10.6.3 and .4 - copied my data - waited - watched - put the machine to sleep - even turned off the wireless in one scenario and pulled the network cable in another. Surprise Surprise - no popup in any scenario !!! It appears that prior to 10.6.8 - that there are no popups - and after waking from sleep (after having copied sufficient data to the AFP share) - instead of a popup - the share would simply (and quitely) unmount itself - not providing any indication that something was wrong. This problem had apparently been happening to me all along - without me knowing. Looks like Apple added the popup feature in 10.6.8 to notify of the break in the network connection - so now it telling us when the issue occurs.

I can understand the popup occurring when I actually go out of wireless range with a MacBook - or I "intentionally" pull the ethernet cable (for purposes of testing). But - waking from sleep - should restore the network connections without complaining or warning - unless the network connections take longer than usual.

I keep my iTunes and iPhoto libraries on my iMac - and had been copying them to the Time Capsule about once a month and then replacing the iTunes and iPhoto libraries on my MacBook Pro and Air - so that they would be fairly current when traveling. I did not randomly start copying the libraries to the TC out of the blue - I was doing this on a regular basis for about a year and never noticed any problem.

Also - with an SMB share mounted on the Time Capsule - you can actually shutdown wireless or pull out the ethernet cable (on both 10.6.8 and 10.7.2) and it will not complain - until you actually go into the share and attempt to access a file within a folder - at which point you will get the Server Connections Interrupted popup.

In reporting these latest findings to my AppleCare case rep - he also reported back to me that there are changes in 10.7.3 that address the network connectivity slowless after wake - that may just solve this issue - at least for me - as he is thinking this may be specific to 3rd generation Time Capsules.

10.7.3 should be out very very soon - and I will test again when it comes out. I realistically can't invest anymore time on this. The TC is working fine for Time Machine backups - and that it what I primarily use it for.

~Scott

Another update, last week I was able to copy 1.2TB iTunes to my drive and it worked no problem, repeated this again a day latter and at around 900gb it dropped. Did it again and it worked.

Has anyone tried the new updates yet ?

Just updated my TimeCapsule and 3 Airport Express devices to 7.6.1 firmware. Also updated to Airport Utility v6.

Haven't had a chance to test the disconnect yet but I will test it very soon and report back. I'm still thinking that the true fix will come with OS X 10.7.3 - but maybe 7.6.1 will actually fix the issue.

~Scott

The disconnect popup continues to occur after upgrading to the 7.6.1 firmware. I can only say that it is happening with less frequency. The replacement Time Capsule has not made any difference. I think we need to wait for the 10.7.3 Lion update to make any further assessments.

I am mostly noticing the popup (usually once) after the Mac wakes from sleep and there was an AFP share mounted prior to the Mac going to sleep. I am also still seeing it after copying large amounts of data to the share. What I am not sure of (yet) is whether the popup is still randomly occurring after the initial popup occurs. I will have to take a closer look.

The only other thing I have noticed is that on occasion - the time capsule will spin up the drive for about 15 seconds - for no apparent reason - and it doesn't even seem like a spin up to full speed - it is almost as if the drive is spinning down before it has finished spinning up. I experieced this behavior on the previous Time Capsule as well.

~Scott

So i started reading this post a few days ago because i got sick and tired of this server interupted popup. It was happening every 10 - 20 minutes. As a result of reading all these posts i reinstalled firmware 7.5.2 and it solved the problem. Then yesterday and update came out. 7.6.1. I installed it and everything seemed fined for a few hours until the popup came back again. Again, i reinstalled 7.5.2 and since yesterday everything has been perfectly fine so far.

I have this problem occasionally with a 4th Gen 3TB Time Capsule. I have found that it does not occur when the backup drive is not mounted. I have a backup that runs every night (not through Time Machine) and these were all successful for 10 days straight with no "Server connections interrupted:" popup, until today when I mounted the drive to check the contents for the latest backup. After ejecting the drive from the desktop, the popups stopped. As far as I am aware, Time Machine can still access for backups, you only need to have the drive mounted for browsing/restoring.

Hope this helps!

Ray - could you be more specific - do you get the popup while you are actively copying to the share? - or when the share is mounted (via AFP) but sitting idle - shortly after a copy "to the drive" completes - or when the Mac wakes from sleep with the share mounted. Are you actually losing any data or experiencing any corruption?

In my case the problem "never" occurs while a copy operation is in process - it is always after. I'm not having any data corruption - that I am aware of. It's very disconerting though - because the popup makes you think something has failed.

I also noticed recently (and this doesn't make a whole lot of sense) that if I set the Mac to never sleep - I never get the popup. I don't even get the popup after a copy operation has completed to the TC. In the "no sleep" scenario - I can cause the popup by forcing the Mac to sleep.

With the 7.5.2 firmware - I get the popup - mostly when the Mac wakes from sleep - and occasionally after a copy operation completes - however - with 7.5.2 the popup happens only once after the copy completes. With 7.6 and 7.6.1 - the popup occurs regularly - once it has started.

~Scott

Scott & others,

I appreciate all the feedback you're giving the rest of us about your travails.

In my case I have a client with a new 3TB Time Capsule with an external hard drive attached. His iMac is on 10.7.2 and the Time Capsule is on 7.6.1. The two devices are connected via ethernet cabling.

The external hard drive on the Time Capsule is being used as the iTunes (and other media) store while the internal drive is being used for Time Machine backups only. (SONOS indexing supposedly has dramas if the media files it's looking at are on the same volume as Time Machine backups.)

So his iMac is left turned on and iTunes is always running - and the external hard drive of the TC is always mounted on the iMac.

His observation is that the message that this thread is about appears on his iMac quite frequently but that it doesn't seem to have any impact upon iTunes. This issue was also happening when his TC was on 7.6.

He is reluctant to perform a downgrade because, we think, the 7.6.1 update resolved an issue where the AFP service (and maybe SMB also) was occasionally locking up on the TC. So on that basis he's prepared to accept the annoyance of having to click the ignore button.

There seems to be some thought that this error is predominantly occuring when an external drive is attached to the TC. If that is the case I may get the hard drive moved onto the iMac and shared from there - given that the iMac is always turned on anyway.

Any other ideas gratefully accepted 🙂

I'll stay tuned to this thread and if I discover any additional symptoms I'll pass them on.

Graham

Scott,

The popup does not occur (that I am aware of anyway, the backup runs in the middle of the night!) while copying. However, the Time Capsule is not being used as an external HD, but as a pure backup device. What I meant in my original post was that when you open a Finder window, and click on the Time Capsule in your Shared devices, the drive will mount on the Desktop, provided you have "Connected Servers" checked under "Show these items on the desktop:" in Finder Preferences. If the Drive is mounted on the Desktop, the "Server connections interrupted" error will show every 15-20 minutes. I don't know why the error shows, but I have noticed if you eject the drive the errors stop, but it can still be accessed by Time Machine or TimeMachineEditor for backups either daily, or I assume constantly, without being mounted.

As far as the sleep issue, your computer cannot backup when it is asleep. Anyone can correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think Time Machine can wake your computer to perform a backup either.

Re: Graham,

I don't think this is a viable solution if you are using a TC connected external HD for an iTunes library, as I imagine the drive would have to be mounted to be available to iTunes. I just did a quick test with a portion of my iTunes library, and once a track is selected to be played, the drive mounts, although not as an Airport drive, but as a shared server drive.

Hope that helps, if I find anything else, I will post revisions.

-Ray

I don't really see any difference in the popup behavior whether I have the drive icon mounted on the desktop or not. It's purely whether or not there is any active mount via AFP in the finder.

Ray - You are correct about Time Machine not backing up while the Mac is sleeping (that is - Time Machine will not wake the Mac to perform a backup - but - should something else wake the Mac for network access (such as using the remote app on the iphone to control iTunes - then Time Machine will in-fact keep the Mac awake long enough to perform a backup. At least this is what I believe I see on all of my Macs.

Just out of curiosity - I assigned a static IP address to my Time Capsule (as it has always been set up to use DHCP) - in hopes that I would see some change in behavior. As of the last 24 hours with a static IP address - I don't see any difference at all.

I still haven't gotten back to Apple Care yet - it's on the list of things to do in the next day or so.

~Scott

Thanks for the feedback Ray. Having the iTunes library and all the iTunes media files on the external drive does work OK - as long as the external hard drive is mounted as a server share and I think we have that working OK using BonjourMounter.

Unfortunately my client has reported over the weekend that the "file serving" functionality of the TC locked up again (requiring a power reboot of the TC) so it seems that 7.6.1 didn't fix that problem as we'd hoped. He's also still frequently getting the disconnect messages that have no impact other than needing to keep clicking ignore.

So our action today will probably be to do the TC downgrade in the fervent hope we can get rid of at least one of his symptoms.

And I'll be trying to find more info about the lockup - possibly raising a case with Apple Support given that it's a new device and his Macs are also still under Apple Care.

Graham