Mavericks Server Not Disconnecting Users

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Level 1

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Mavericks Server Not Disconnecting Users

I'm looking to brainstorm with others out there who have deployed Mavericks servers who are experienceing issues with file sharing services. I have about 7-8 servers that I have done recently with Mavericks Server that all experince varying levels of issues with users connecting to AFP not disconnecting properly.

One extreme case, is where a server has about 25 users, and at the end of the day, Server shows upwards of 40 connections. Many of the users will have two and three connections even though they are on one machine with one IP.

Eventually what happens is that users begin to have permissions issues, read-only notifications when trying to open a file, and the beachball when trying to save a file they were editing off the server. I have minimized the problem by having all the suers shut down their machines at night, and for some, set thier machines to never sleep during the day. I also have the server restarting every night to break the connections.

I have also gone in and turned on the disconnect idle users, changed the disconnect idle users time, and changed the sleep and idle times with no success in fixing the problem. If I don't restart the server at night, users will show connected for as long as it has been since thier initial connection. I also went into sharing in the system prefs and checked the connected users there. It is the same that shows in the server.

There are some other similar discussions out there, but I need to focus this bug on AFP.

OS X Server

Posted on Mar 20, 2014 7:19 PM

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Answer 1

cpragman

Level 2

465 points

Mar 21, 2014 5:39 AM in response to tekwerx IT

Type the following command in terminal:

$ sudo serveradmin afp settings

The system should dump the AFP settings to the screen. There will be two lines related to idle disconnect (one is on/off, the other is time). What do those two lines say?

Also, have you tried restarting AFP since you made your changes?

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Answer 2

Mar 21, 2014 5:45 AM in response to tekwerx IT

If you think you've found a bug in AFP, then you'll want to collect whatever data you can from the console logs on the systems involved, and report that directly to the folks at Apple. (Apple might also want information from the mount command on the client, and from a command such as netstat -an | grep 548 invoked on both the client and the server, based on previous discussions and previous reports.)

As a test for some of the traditional problems that can arise with network homes (and you may well have already found these), ensure that guest access to the AFP sharepoints is enabled, and ensure that fast user switching is disabled.

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Answer 3

tekwerx IT Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 21, 2014 1:05 PM in response to cpragman

I have played around with the idle discconect and sleep times. Here is how the AFP is set up:

afp:maxGuests = -1

afp:afpTCPPort = 548

afp:clientSleepTime = 12

afp:replyCacheQuantum = 32

afp:maxConnections = -1

afp:sendGreetingOnce = no

afp:reconnectTTLInMin = 240

afp:clientSleepOnOff = yes

afp:loginGreeting = ""

afp:errorLogPath = "/Library/Logs/AppleFileService/AppleFileServiceError.log"

afp:errorLogTime = 0

afp:activityLogTime = 7

afp:errorLogSize = 1000

afp:kerberosPrincipal = "afpserver/LKDC:SHA1.F4848D1138AE9904A7A67C6F2F23AE68465F6435@LKDC:SHA1.F4848D1 138AE9904A7A67C6F2F23AE68465F6435"

afp:recon1SrvrKeyTTLHrs = 168

afp:idleDisconnectOnOff = yes

afp:reconnectFlag = "no_admin_kills"

afp:activityLog = yes

afp:reconnectKeyLocation = "/private/etc/AFP.conf"

afp:loginGreetingTime = 0

afp:adminGetsSp = yes

afp:fullServerMode = yes

afp:idleDisconnectMsg = ""

afp:updateHomeDirQuota = yes

afp:activityLogPath = "/Library/Logs/AppleFileService/AppleFileServiceAccess.log"

afp:authenticationMode = "standard_and_kerberos"

afp:admin31GetsSp = no

afp:shutdownThreshold = 3

afp:TCPQuantum = 1048576

afp:allowSendMessage = yes

afp:idleDisconnectTime = 6

afp:loggingAttributes:logOpenFork = yes

afp:loggingAttributes:logDelete = yes

afp:loggingAttributes:logCreateDir = yes

afp:loggingAttributes:logLogin = yes

afp:loggingAttributes:logLogout = yes

afp:loggingAttributes:logCreateFile = yes

afp:tickleTime = 30

afp:specialAdminPrivs = no

afp:noNetworkUsers = no

afp:idleDisconnectFlag:adminUsers = yes

afp:idleDisconnectFlag:registeredUsers = yes

afp:idleDisconnectFlag:usersWithOpenFiles = yes

afp:idleDisconnectFlag:guestUsers = yes

afp:recon1TokenTTLMins = 10080

afp:guestAccess = no

afp:allowRootLogin = no

afp:activityLogSize = 1000

afp:afpServerEncoding = 0

afp:createHomeDir = yes

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2014 7:42 PM in response to tekwerx IT

I have the same issue since upgraded to mavericks, please call Apple Care, we need more people calling apple care and let them know the severity of this issue so they take priority to fix this.

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Answer 5

tekwerx IT Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 4, 2014 7:09 AM in response to Hector Castillo

Still no luck. I have been trying everything I can think of, and a lot that shouldn't matter. I know a clean install supposedly won't finx the problem, but I may try that anyways.

I have also been participating in this thread for anyone who wants to see more history behind this issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5553964?start=30&tstart=0

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Answer 6

Jul 1, 2014 10:52 PM in response to tekwerx IT

Updated server and clients to 10.9.4 did not fix issues.

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Answer 7

Rubi08

Level 1

8 points

Jul 28, 2014 4:23 PM in response to tekwerx IT

I have been having similar issues. I am trying to make sure its not a network fault as users will get disconnected in the middle of the day, their open Word documents get orphaned and have to "save as". The Mac's immediately start a new connection but the initial connection holds the Word doc open and the users can only access the Word doc as read only. Its not until the AFP service or server is restarted that the connections are released. AFP settings are still the default. Server 10.9.4 - clients 10.8.5. Updating clients soon, not hopeful.

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Answer 8

Aug 4, 2014 12:39 AM in response to Rubi08

I'm having the same issues as tekwerx IT and Rubi08. Multiple AFP-connections per user, problems with the Word-documents getting orphaned, troubles with the permissions, etcetera. The latest update didn't solve the problem. I haven't got a solution unfortunately.

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Answer 9

Aug 4, 2014 8:46 PM in response to Edwin Venhorst

Multiple AFP-connections per user, problems with the Word-documents getting orphaned, troubles with the permissions

Those all sound perfectly "regular" to me, whatever version of Server you may be running.

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Answer 10

Jendres

Level 1

0 points

Aug 8, 2014 12:59 PM in response to tekwerx IT

Same problem here. One change that helped lessen (but not eliminate) the problem was to force our users to use wired connections rather than wifi. (We've tried lots of other things, including a clean re-install, but nothing else made a difference.)

This is a huge pain. I'm having to monitor the users on the file server constantly in order to disconnect sessions manually when they proliferate. When things get out of hand I reboot the file server.

Very annoying, Apple! Please fix this!

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Answer 11

Sep 7, 2014 2:17 PM in response to tekwerx IT

Same problem here. Server reports 223 connected users even though we're a family of four. Total pain.

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Answer 12

Oct 16, 2014 9:57 AM in response to tekwerx IT

I don't usually like to post "me too" responses...but I have noticed this problem at several sites where 10.9 Server has been implemented. Even after changing the AF settings via the command line the idle users are not getting disconnected/logged off. If I check the File Sharing in Server.app it shows 4-5 connections for several users, many of which have been idle for DAYS.

These systems are all running 10.9.5 with the latest version of Server 3.x. This problem has been there since day one of Server 3 and has not been solved.

I miss 10.6 Server. 😟

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Answer 13

robbobbo

Level 1

0 points

Nov 6, 2014 7:12 AM in response to Eric Bullock

I'm having the same issue. We have very few users and often there is just one user with over 1000 connections from the same IP address. I spoke to someone in Apple Enterprise Support and his only advice was to periodically turn File Sharing off and then on again. My understanding was that instead of fixing the problem in Mavericks, they are doing away with AFP in Yosemite and have focused on a newer version of SMB that will replace AFP entirely. Instead of stabilizing the OS versions they release, they keep releasing new ones that are invariably buggy and never stabilize them before putting out a new one. This makes no sense for those of us trying to operate a stable, reliable business environment. We also run Filemaker Server, which is very finicky, and upgrading OS versions all the time is absolutely not an option.

File sharing is a very basic component of running a server and I don't understand why they cannot (and are choosing not to) fix this issue with AFP.

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Answer 14

Nov 6, 2014 7:25 AM in response to robbobbo

It happens with SMB too and is a client problem.

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Answer 15

robbobbo

Level 1

0 points

Nov 6, 2014 7:36 AM in response to Richard Cartledge

I didn't seem to have the same problem when I switched to SMB, but the speed of access to the shared files was much slower, and Spotlight searching of the shared folders (something my client uses quite a bit) was not working with SMB. If it's a client problem, are there changes to make on the client side that can help with this issue?

Thanks

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