Level 1

14 points

Content caching

After reading that High Sierra now offers content caching, I immediately enabled it, waiting for the first AppStore update, which was available to me this morning in the form of the HS Supplemental update. My understanding is that if you have selected one machine on your network, and enabled Content Caching, it would collect the update and then make it available to all the other devices on your network. I chose my iMac as it is permanently connected via ethernet; enabled Content Caching; made sure the options that other Macs would find the update(s) were enabled; rebooted the other and allowed the other Macs to find the caching machine; download and install the updates.

My iMac downloaded the update and applied it. But on the Sharing options, it shows my iMac cached only 3.4MB. Thus the other two Macs eventually downloaded the update individually. Some 915MB per update makes for 2.7GB bandwidth consumed.

My network uses a Time Capsule, DHCP reservations, and all the Macs are connected via ethernet.

What do you think I could have done wrong?

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS High Sierra (10.13), Late 2015, 4Ghz, 16GB, 500GB SSD

Posted on Oct 5, 2017 8:34 PM

23 replies

andrieso Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 11, 2017 9:43 AM in response to John Galt

John

Thanks for the feedback to this. I am sure is will work - I like the bit you said "not terribly obvious when it does". I guess that is the whole point - it must work on the background. I am now waiting for whatever Appstore updates I may have and ten monitor it. Right now my cache is a measly 1.7MB.

John Galt

Level 10

155,306 points

Oct 6, 2017 8:48 AM in response to andrieso

I understand. I doubt I'm doing anything wrong either; Content Caching simply doesn't appear to be doing anything interesting. It's one of those things that is going to take a long time to diagnose.

John Galt

Level 10

155,306 points

Oct 11, 2017 6:36 AM in response to andrieso

I don't know what invalid characters my post contained so here's a screenshot of it.

John Galt

Level 10

155,306 points

Oct 11, 2017 7:11 AM in response to John Galt

Oct 6, 2017 7:07 AM in response to andrieso

What do you mean by "holes in the process"? For most folks the instructions are: turn it on, and restart any devices you expect to use it immediately. (If you don't restart them, they will eventually discover the new content cache but not right away.) The AssetCacheLocatorUtil command can help troubleshoot content caching issues. You only need advanced settings if your network is complex or uses multiple public IP addresses.

andrieso Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 6, 2017 7:30 AM in response to More Broccoli Please

More Broccoli Please

I used what I would consider to be default settings, just as Apple recommends. There is one option where on the clients you can supply the IP address for the parent in the settings for the remote computer's Parent settings. Since my Time Capsule manages a range of DHCP reservations, I figured it should be quit simple. I also restarted all the services.

Anyway, no harm done, it gives me something to do to try and figure it out. Running AssetCacheLocatorUtil gave a long list of results, but the last two seem to be meaningful:

2017-10-06 18:27:40.235 AssetCacheLocatorUtil[1208:374970] Testing all found servers for reachability...

2017-10-06 18:27:40.245 AssetCacheLocatorUtil[1208:374970] This computer is able to reach all of the above caching servers.

Oct 6, 2017 12:47 PM in response to More Broccoli Please

More Broccoli Please wrote:

Does your disk have at least a few GB of free space? Content caching doesn't do much on a nearly-full disk.

....

I would thing setting a cache size of 150 GB on a 500GB disk that has nothing

else on it would suffice.

More Broccoli Please wrote:

...

Also, what does AssetCacheLocatorUtil report? Complaining might feel good, but we can't help you without data.

All it has is zeroes, zeroes, and more zeroes as previously stated.

It was all good until it was decided to yank it from the Server app.

Can't even easily get logs now, just a summary. When it was part of the

server app, you just opened the service log to see what happened or didn't.

As it is now, there isn't (at least easy ) way to have a clue as to trace what may

be happening (or not).

Oct 14, 2017 6:56 AM in response to andrieso

Well, that didn't last long!!!!!!!!

Less than a week later, Content Caching is yet again

totally and completely useless!!!!!

On the "server", opened terminal and ran the command:

log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.AssetCache"'

Opened up the MacApp Store and downloaded updates on multiple

Macs, and not a single recognition whatsoever in the log that any Mac

was making any request!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ran

AssetCacheLocatorUtil

on all Macs and all saw the server and said the server was available.

So, the latest and greatest Content Caching is even worse than useless,

it is totally unreliable! Flipping a coin is more predictable that "guessing"

whether content caching will work or not and with what!

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Content caching