SMB Server, Many open files

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SMB Server, Many open files

Hi All,

I have a windows/Mac Enviroment where all the Mac's are bound to the AD (No magic triangle, just straight up AD)

Recently, we have noticed that the Macs show up with many open files from the server (like 50+ ). If we look on the machine itself, there may in actual fact be only 3 or 4 files open.

It doesnt cause issues often, but every now and then users will get "too many open files" or "file is already open"

A colleague suggested that maybe the way that preview works is causing this issue? If the user is using icon view, does preview "soft open" (for lack of a better term) the files?

Im not sure what else it could be.

Thanks guys

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Apr 1, 2014 6:58 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 2, 2014 3:08 AM in response to Gienster

I run into another issue which may explain yours:

When mounting SMB2 shares off OS X 10.9 server from XSan volume, Finder does not show many files when opening folders having at least a few hundred files. Only disabling icon previews in Finder helped solve that problem. There is something wrong with the way quicklook generates icon previews on initial folder opening (maybe tries to open too many files at once in a short time).

You may check if disabling icon previews for all folders by default helps your problem (I know, not a nice solution).

Second suggestion coming to my mind - are your Macs allowed to sleep? Maybe something wrong happens at the moment of system sleep and file handles are not closed properly.

Third - are you using SMB2 (Mavericks clients only) or older SMB/CIFS? Maybe switching the protocol (if you have such option) would help.

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Answer 2

Gienster Author

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Apr 7, 2014 2:02 AM in response to Witold Oleksiak

Thanks for the reply.

Ill google around and see if I can find a link on turning off icon preview and give it a try 🙂

All Clients are using 10.7.5 except one (newer model) using 10.8.5, they are all set to never sleep as we had issues with server connections dropping out and clients having to reconnect to mapped network drives.

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Answer 3

Apr 7, 2014 5:06 AM in response to Gienster

CMD+J in open Finder window will get you View Options, where you can uncheck "Show icon preview" option and press "Use as Defaults" button.

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