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Network volume "appears" in random finder folders

Hey,
Recently we've been having an issue where a network volume mount-point appears multiple times within itself, in random folders - i.e. we have a volume called "Work"; I can navigate inside it up to the 4th or 5th level of the folder structure, than randomly I get to a folder where some the files and folders inside don't show up and instead I will see multiple instances of the "Work" volume.


Once they appear they usually persist until a computer restart. Un-mounting the volume sometimes help but not always, and after a restart the problem seems to be solved, until it come back randomly, anywhere from a few hours to a few days later.

This only seems to happen on our iMac machines (connected via ethernet), as the Mac Pro's connected via fiber do not have this issue - However, our users know to connect via AFP and I've seen this happen over AFP, so it's not an SMB issue.


So far I tried:

1. P-RAM reset + Repair permissions - this seems to work (for a random amount of time), but I have no way of telling if that's because of the restart itself or because of the repair permissions.

2. Removing p-lists for the finder, network, xsan and anything else that might be related.


The machines exhibiting this behaviour are all mid 2010-late 2013, on OS X 10.9.4 and 10.9.5.


I really can't thing of anything else to try, so if anyone here has any other suggestions or if any of you have seen this issue before - I'd be happy to hear it.

Thanks!

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Apr 20, 2015 5:56 AM

Reply
19 replies

Apr 28, 2015 3:20 AM in response to RotemD

So no one has seen this issue before or has any idea what related problems might cause this?
In the past couple of days I also tried formatting one of the machines with a clean install of 10.9.5, but the problem came back after two days.


I really think this must be something in our server settings since the machines presenting this issue are all different models, but than again I can't figure out why this is only happening on certain machines and not on others with the same set up.


If anyone has any ideas, I would love to get some advice.

Apr 28, 2015 6:39 AM in response to f1rehead

Are there any double or multiple entries in /Volumes of the same network volume, when you check in the Terminal.

Have you tried a powermanagement reset as well besides the PRAM reset?


Sometimes my clients do experience the same issue in smaller portions, but normally are fixed after a reboot. I have never seen it come back in the matter you describe, do the foldernames contain any weird characters?

Does it happen in a freshly created group of nested folders?

What are the permissions set on that share?

Goodluck

Jeffrey

Apr 29, 2015 12:17 AM in response to jepping

Hey Jeffrey,
There are no multiple entries in /Volumes when I check the terminal, here is a screenshot of the terminal "mount" command that I ran last time I had this issue:

User uploaded file

As you can see all volumes only show up once and they are all AFP connections, none of them have any problematic special characters (Work, Common, UserHomes, Temp, System, _Archive and _Unsorted_Rushes).

Is a power management reset the one where you hold the power button for 10-15 seconds? If it is then yes I have tried it before resetting the PRAM.

I haven't tried creating a fresh group, I will try that and see if it happens.


We've had this issue happen with multiple shares, all with different permissions, but the one that seems to have it happen most often is the "Work" mount (most commonly used volume on our network) -

User uploaded file

The top levels of Work have read-only permissions, but we have ACLs that allow users to write inside what we call "project" folders, e.g. in the screenshot below, the users will only be able to write inside the folders within "Trailer_02.2015" (2D, 3D, After, Design, Edit etc).


User uploaded file


It's also worth mentioning that when this happens, the volume does not show up multiple times under "Devices" or "Shared", but just randomly appears multiple times inside random folders, instead of other files and folders that are actually there. This can be on folders where the users have read/write permissions (i.e. 3D, After, etc) or on read-only folders (i.e. Trailer folder).

I will try to screenshot it today so you can understand what I mean.


Thank you for your reply, it's comforting to hear that someone else had this issue before since I couldn't find anything about it online.
It's so frustrating that I can't figure out what's causing this.. Every time I think I solved it, it just keeps coming back.. The randomness of the whole situation (having it happen in random folders that have nothing in common, only on certain machines and not others and the mere fact that sometimes it happen multiple times a day and other times it only comes back after 2-3 days) is driving me crazy.
Hopefully I can figure it out soon.

Any further help will of course be really appreciated.

Thanks again (:

Apr 29, 2015 1:44 AM in response to RotemD

There is a dot in one the final folder names: Trailer_02.2015, I would certainly remove the dot there.

All those dots will give unexpected behaviour, as it is sometimes seen as an app rather than a folder.

Other folders seem ok for now.


And you share a mounted volume directly? Rather than sharing a folder located on that volume?

That might give unexpected errors as well, I always share from a folder located on an external volume. It gives you more control. How are the permissions of that volume setup?


On the folder permissions, there are only posix permissions present, not any other permissions. Could you make another screenshot of the permissions inside that folder, go to the Server.app, click on the top left corner and select storage. There you can view the permissions per folder. I am curious about that setup directly below the Work share.


As for the Powermanagement reset:

Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

Goodluck


Jeffrey

Apr 29, 2015 7:01 AM in response to jepping

I don't think the dots are the issue since we have a lot of folders without dots in the folder name or in the path beforehand, one of which I specifically remember the issue has happened in before.

As far as mounting the volume directly, I am aware this might cause issues, but it's too late to change it now - this volume has been around long before I started working for the company; all of our projects (old archived ones and current ones) point to files on various locations inside this volume, so changing or moving the share point now would be quite impossible.. It would take all of our media assets offline and would make restoring a project from backup an absolute nightmare.
If the volume sharing was the issue, wouldn't we be seeing this problem on all of our machines? What I find the most baffling is the fact that the problem only persists on certain machines (all of them iMac machines connected via ethernet, however we do have other iMacs and Mac minis with a similar or identical setup, connected the same way and accessing the same volumes, which have never had this happen).

The permissions for the volume itself are what I had screenshot in my last comment - Read only for staff and everyone else (except administrators).


As far as folder permissions go, as I said we have ACLs set up only on folders the users are supposed to write to (folders inside a "project", e.g. from my previous image - 3D, 2D, Edit etc.)
Here is the screenshot for a project's 3D folder:

User uploaded file


In regards to the SMC reset - that's what I thought you meant, just didn't know what it was called.. So yeah I did try it, and the issue still came back.


Another thing I just realised I never mentioned is that we've had the same volumes set up for years without an issue, and the problem only started around the time we upgraded from Lion to Mavericks. That's why I thought it might have something to do with the upgrade itself, but as I mentioned the issue also re-appeared after a clean install of 10.9.5.


Thanks again 🙂

Apr 29, 2015 8:27 AM in response to RotemD

They might not cause the issue, but I still would not recommend using dots anywhere in filesharing, the same goes for / and other characters like &.

What I have seen is that going forward OSX becomes more strict using filesharing because of security issues or stability issues.

That's why the issue might not arise using 10.7, but will cause issues using 10.9 or later.


Do those certain machines all run Mavericks or is it a mix of both?

Is your network ok, it could be a defective switch/router acting up now and then, can you rule that out as a cause?

Permissions seem ok, but why not just use read/write permissions?


As far as sharing goes, when you move your share from a volume to a folder and share that new Work folder with the same setup, everything should remain the same. It will still be mounted as a Work share, the only difference is in the serversettings.

Goodluck


Jeffrey

Apr 29, 2015 8:26 AM in response to jepping

OK, I will take that into account for new folders we open from now on.


All the machines are running Mavericks, some 10.9.4 and some 10.9.5.
Our monitoring software (PRTG) doesn't show any problems with our switches, plus the affected machines are on a couple of different switches, so I think this can be ruled out as a cause.


What do you mean by "just use read/write permissions", on the entire volume..? We have a certain folder structure we would like to maintain, so that some folders can't be accidentally (or deliberately) moved or deleted.

If you mean why are the POSIX permissions different than the ACLs, that would be because of our automation - we have a permission-repair script running once a week that resets POSIX permissions for the entire volume, than changes only project-folders to R+W via ACLs. Do you think that might be part of the issue? However that brings me back to wondering why this issue only appears on certain machines and not others, since the script is running on the volume itself, and all of our users have the same permissions set for this volume.
Other volumes affected by this issue have more complicated permissions set up, but seem to actually be less problematic - I've only seen this happen a couple of times on volumes other than the Work volume.


In regards to sharing, what you're saying is true for AFP clients, but will still be a problem for us since our fiber-clients (Mac Pros) have block-level access via Xsan, meaning they see the Work volume as a device. That will add an extra level in the path for them, and since the fiber-clients are our Editing and Studio (Animation and After Effects) machines, it will break the media connection for their projects.

Coming to think of it, I can imagine that was the reason the entire volume was shared in the first place, instead of a specific folder.

Apr 29, 2015 10:43 PM in response to RotemD

Based on your latest input, changing the path for that AFP volume is not recommended at all.

The dependencies are too great. Also the switches seem to be ok.


Do the other shares contain dots in the folder or filenames as well?

POSIX permissions on a top level folder in a share is fine, but you specifically changed the ACL for groups instead of using the basic read/write ACL setup in permissions which should suffice in any normal situation. So I was just wondering about that.

Can you verify another share without any or less issues and see what the differences are?

What kind of output do you get from this command?

sharing -l

Apr 30, 2015 11:16 AM in response to RotemD

I've seen it, but on OS X 10.6.8 servers with OS X 10.6.8 clients. I have a hunch that it happens when the client goes to sleep for a longish time, say over a weekend, without disconnecting from the server. Something goes wrong with the reconnection and you end up with a mounted server volume that contains itself.

Don't have a reliable cure, or even a good theory, sorry. I just try to remember to shutdown over before going home for the weekend.

:-(

C.

May 3, 2015 3:32 AM in response to jepping

The other shares also contain some folders with dots in the folder names, possibly less than the "work" share, but mostly all the 3rd-4th level folders have dots since we use dates separated by dots.


Our other shares, including ones that have had no issues, have pretty much the same permissions set up - Top folders are Read only for everyone, and about 3-5 levels in, the folders are R/W for certain groups or for the staff group (which includes everyone that is a permanent employee).
The reason we separate by groups is because we have certain folders that only some departments need to be able to write to.


This is the output when running this command:

User uploaded file

The Common share for example, has never exhibited this issue - it has read only permissions for everyone (POSIX), and ACLs which allow specific-folder-access (3rd and 4th level in) for certain users and groups.


I also managed to screenshot the issue when the other day - This time it was just one instance, but the same behaviour also occurs where multiple files/folders show up as the volume:

User uploaded file

This is what happens when I ran the mount and ls -la commands - The share only appears to be mounted once, and the list shows the original file that is supposed to be there (mount pleasant offline.mov) :

User uploaded file

I've also uploaded a video to youtube to show the behaviour - as you can see going into the "volume" actually comes back to the top-level of the share, and does not disappear when navigating to another folder. As I've said the only solution is to unmount the share (which doesn't always work), or restart the machine.

Sometimes the "volume" disappears for a few seconds (like you can see happened for a brief moment in 00:06 of the video), than it comes back randomly.


Thanks again for all your help Jeffrey, hopefully I can figure this out soon.


And cdhw - Thank you as well, although I doubt this is exactly the same situation since sometimes it happens during the work day, and not just during the night or weekend.

May 4, 2015 3:57 AM in response to RotemD

Your observation:

What I find the most baffling is the fact that the problem only persists on certain machines (all of them iMac machines connected via ethernet, however we do have other iMacs and Mac minis with a similar or identical setup, connected the same way and accessing the same volumes, which have never had this happen).

seems interesting to me. It may be possible to learn something by swapping the location of iMacs that have never had the problem with iMacs that often have the problem.


C.

May 4, 2015 11:18 PM in response to cdhw

Hey,
I will give that a shot, although since they are connected via ethernet I doubt the physical location makes any difference.. If anything I thought it might be something in the way these specific machines are registered in the domain, but when I look at the open directory options I can't see any difference between the machines that have exhibited this issue and ones that haven't.


Does anyone here know if there is a bug-report / help mail-support I can contact regarding this issue?
I'm from Israel and all I could find was that I need to turn to the physical support in my country, however they have not been very helpful in solving this issue..


Thanks again and have a great week (:

May 6, 2015 2:41 AM in response to RotemD

You can file a report here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

or track progress with a bugreport here:

https://bugreport.apple.com/


Do you have an AppleCare agreement, they can setup a case and troubleshoot it?


Otherwise viewing the video, this might be worth trying:

Delete the current share, remove all permissions and setting it up as a new share all together.

Use chmod -R -N to delete all ACL's on that share.

Perhaps there is a permissions issue somewhere down the line in the share itself, resetting all those permissions could fix it.

Goodluck


Jeffrey

Network volume "appears" in random finder folders

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