Q: Server File Sharing unstable on mac and windows network on Mavericks and OSX Server 3.0

Here goes the OSX Server ...

I had a well running OSX server on 10.8. First of all, beeing forced to buy a new version of the server software should have been something apple could have told me in advance (here, free mavericks ;-) but now you have to pay as the old server component will not work ;-)) Not a big deal, but nice to know in advance.

Filesharing after the upgrade and purchase is a joke. AFP and Samba are very unreliable and best of all:

Apple kicked FTP support.

Users can't login to different folders anymore.

If someone could give me an understandable explanation for all that, i would be very thankful.

It is horrible to tell you customers to get a mac because it's all easy and it just works if afterwards you have to charge them countless hours to get all the messed up things working again.

In the end it will prevent people from upgrading, at least it will for me.

Build 13C59 is out, anyone tested yet?

Hi guys,

Same problem as everybody else it would seem. Latest version of Server installed on the latest version of Mavericks.

A forced roll out of new hardware means we're using Mavericks with a mixed environment of Lion / Mavericks and a few Windows clients.

The main issue seems to be safe save bug where it drops the connection when somebody is editing and won't let anyone else edit. Just seems very unstable.

Any news regarding those development fixes may see the light of day?

All the best.

Chris

The main issue we're seeing is that user connections are not being disconnected properly. I had 15 connections to the server this morning. 11 of them were connections from yesterday for users who disconnected from the server, closed their computer and went home from the day. The server never released the connection. These multiple connections cause connection for that user to the server to be hit or miss. Sometimes they can't connect at all. The error message is somethign to the effect of "The server could not be found". Other times, they can connect but will eventually be disconnected. The error message is basically "You have been disconnected from the server". In this case, the finder simply hangs and the spinning rainbow cursor begins. The only way to fix this is for me to log into the server and deleted all of the user's connections, and have the user reboot their computer. FYI, we're using AFP primarily to connect the clients to the Mavericks server. I have a few Windows users connecting via SMB and they have issues as well. Files get locked and no one can open them (error message is the file is already in use...). I've also had to kill the SMBD service to fix an issue where none of my Windows users could connect to the server period.

Needless to say, this is beyond frustrating. I've been administering OS X server for several years now. We just retired a Snow Leopard server that was bulletproof. In fact, it's still running until I can migrate a few remaining folders off of it. We had the occasional bug with Office apps saving over the network, but it was rare and all of my users knew what to do when it happened.

Our current issues with Mavericks server are untenable and I am really not sure what we're going to do. I have a meeting today with the production manager to discuss options. I'm (maybe foolishly) awaiting the 10.9.2 release in hopes that it will fix our issues.

I'm curious, is anyone else using AFP to connect their Mac clients to the server? We never used SMB due to the file and resource fork issue. FYI, we're running in a graphic design/print production environment and commonly transfer very large files across the network.

only way out.... downgrade!

Mavericks and Server 3 is like driving a bus with bicycle wheels. Possbile, but very hard to steer!

OK, so 10.9.2 just dropped - does this implement the fix, or do we need to wait for a server update?

Curious here too...

Well, they are different sizes.

Okay 10.9.2 13C64 is out and I can see no differences SMB is still very buggy!

What I have found out is that one Windows client runs stable and as soone as I connect with the second or third client the windows app crashes at random.

Even the Mac clients crash randomly.

@Apple: HELP OR YOU LOOSE LOT OF BUSINESS CUSTOMERS!!!

That's not at all the news I was hoping to hear Christoph. I won't have a chance to install/try the update unter this weenkend and now it appears that I shouldn't even bother. I'm going to have to come up with a completely new plan since we simply cannot run a magazine with all of the issues Mavericks brought on.

Does anyone have any recommendations for alternative file servers in a 90%/10% Mac to PC department? Surely there's another solution out there that's reliable.

As an aside, I find it pathetic that not one person from Apple bothered to comment in this thread. Absolutely pathetic.

Yeah apple don't comment here at all AFAIK.

I've installed the update in two mixed environments, shall let you know how I get on. SMB2 is listed as a fix in the changelog. There's also a server app update but that only fixes Xcode user admin issues.

it is interesting, because while we are having issues, i would not call them untenable.

we have an 80/20 mix, Apple/PC. most macs are 10.9, a couple 10.7, one 10.5. the PCs are mostly XP, with one 7, two 8 and one Windows 2000 - all PCs are tethered image capture machines.

Server is a 2012 Pro.

We really dont have any agregious connection issues with the Macs at all, none with the Windows 8 machine, and regular problems with the XP machines and cannot connect with the Win 2000 at all. I really think the largest issue is Apple deprecating SMB1 support, and this problem seems to disappear with the newest versions of Windows.

I've been debating installing SMBX, but so far a shceduled weekly reboot of the server has kept the issues from affecting production. I am wondering if there are multiple issues going on for some groups.

10.9.2 will be rolled out Friday for us.

Interesting comments sandorferenczy.

All of my Mac clients are 10.8.6 and I notice you don't have any 10.8.x clients. We stayed at 10.8.6 due to some software compatibility restraints with 10.9. All of my PCs are Win7. I would be curious to know what OS others are running on the clients.

Not sure if it's relevant, but our server is a mid 2012 Mac Mini with 2 SSDs (1 for OS and 1 OS clone using CCC). For storage we're using an Areca Thunderbolt 12 TB external array.

Just to reiterate, the biggest issues I'm seeing are 1) Server fails to properly disconnect clients. This causes a host of issues that ultimate leads to file locks and finder crashes that render the machine unusable until after a reboot. 2) General file locks for both Mac and PC clients. Users receive an error that "The file is already in use....". There is no one pattern I can identify for either issue but these issues together make this server version a deal-breaker for us.

I might need to revisit the 10.9 client upgrades and see if we can make that work.

tecitdept,

I have mixed environment of file servers [unix, windows 2003/2008 and shared DAS from Mac OS Maverick] and mixed environment of clients [Windows xp/7/8,Mac OS,FreeBSD].

I end with the following scheme :

I'm using Solaris 11.1 with napp-it server appliance. The combo offers CIFS,AFP,NFS,iSCSI,FTP,HTTP [and ZFS of course].

Also extemez-IP at the Windows 2008r2 file servers when Macs needs to browse them.

SMBuP at the Mac with the mentioned DAS.

Macs to Solaris -> AFP [netatalk 3.04]

Macs to Windows -> AFP [extemez-IP]

Windows to Solaris ->CIFS [ Oracle's Solaris implementation,works like a charm]

Windows to Mac's DAS -> Samba [SMBup at the MAC]

FreeBSD to Solaris ->NFS

Far away from the KISS approach, which I admire,but it works and users are happy !!!

Tried NFS for Macs to Solaris-file transfers,folders listing are fine and fast but dealing with file permissions is PITA.

Tried everything mentioned in this thread and others w/o success.

Like everyone here, I am having the same problem with the file sharing. I am running OSX server 10.9.2 on the latest Mac Mini (Late 2012 I think) on a small network of 4 computers, 2 Mac's running 10.9 and 2 PC's running Windows 7 all connected via SMB.

The problem I'm having specifically is that on the Windows 7 PC's most files appear to be corrupt and won't open; it's really a hit and miss. As far as opening files with file sharing on PC's, the only solution I came up with was copying files from the server to the PC I was working on, using the local HDD as a scartch disk to work on the file, and then copying it back to the server when I was done. Not the best solution, but it's going to have to work for now.

I'm also having the users not disconnecting from the server problem too: restarting the server worked for me.

This is as far as I got with these problems. I hope this helps.