[besson3c]

I'm dying here, does anybody have any suggestions?

I have about 5 SSHfs volumes mounted, and at random times I'll get a lot of beachballs waiting for an app with a file on the network volume to respond and let me resume editing the file. I used to have the same problem with Appleshare, FUSE/SSHfs has actually been better, so I know that this isn't a FUSE specific issue.

I'm still sick of beachballs, beachballs, beachballs and more beachballs. I'm not sure what part of OS X is to blame for this, but it sucks, and it gets old really quickly. If I had to wager a guess, I'd guess that the fault lies with the Finder. Do any of the Finder replacements fare better in this regard? Which ones are you using?

There is a good possibility that my network speed is fluctuating, but why can't the Finder deal with this gracefully? Why lock out the entire app when this happens? Is it refreshing the contents of the file I'm working on from the network volume? If so, is there a way to tell it to stop doing this when I switch between applications? Once at launch would be fine. Most often, I would prefer a file lock anyway (only one person working on the file).

I hope Apple fixes these problems with Leopard. If they don't, it may eventually force me to jump ship. I bet I've lost a lot of time dealing with stupid beachballs (and with kernel panics I've been getting when saving to FUSE volumes lately, but that's another story). Why does the Finder have to be so finicky and sensitive with network volumes? I just don't get it...

[mduell]

Ahh FTFF.

The finder has sucked for years, and Apple shows no signs of being interested in fixing it.

[besson3c]

Does Finder replacements such as pathfinder change the whole network connectivity thing, or simply provide a replacement GUI?

[besson3c]

Running a ping test for a while on two machines in my network (wired and wireless), I see that for some reason my OS X machine (wireless) is experiencing packet loss... This could be a software or hardware issue with my laptop, but regardless, there are plenty of conditions which can cause access to network volumes being blocked. I don't understand why OS X wigs out when the network goes away for a while. I mean, it's a multi-threaded OS, it should be able to suck it up...

Are there any "defaults" command options to change how OS X behaves with network volumes, different timeout/retry values and such?

[besson3c]

Looked at XFile and Pathfinder, they appear to be GUI replacements of the Finder.

As I think about this some more, it seems that my problem is how OS X applications appear to be really chatty and insist on speaking to network volumes when I do stuff such as return to an app with a remote file open, and while speaking to these volumes lock up the app. I guess this is more of an OS X thing than a Finder thing, and I would imagine that no third party tool would replace this behavior.

Mind you, it does really suck browsing files on a network volume in the Finder too, even with a speedy network.

[rehoot]

I'm not sure exactly how you are making your connection, but regular SSH has a connection timeout option (read the man page--I never used the option). If you are using FUSE or something else, they should have settings for each of the options in SSH. Also look at "ServerAliveInterval" or similar setting (sometimes called "keep alive signal"), and TCPKeepAlive, reconnect (or auto reconnect). Your server would have similar options. The server might be tuned for a reliable cable network instead of a flaky wireless network. Unfortunately, some apps that access the network have their own settings for timeout and retry (like databases).

I'm assuming that you need the encryption of SSH, but have you experimented with other ways to connect to the server (SAMBA)? You also might want to see if there are other unnecessary hits to the network drive by watching the Activity Monitor when you are running just the bare minimum applications. Tune any apps to reduce "keep alive" signals and adjust their settings to avoid panic.

Wireless is convenient, but if you have multiple network connections and want speed, get a cable.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by rehoot 

I'm not sure exactly how you are making your connection, but regular SSH has a connection timeout option (read the man page--I never used the option). Also look at "ServerAliveInterval" or similar setting (sometimes called "keep alive signal"), and TCPKeepAlive. Unfortunately, some apps that access the network have their own settings for timeout and retry (like databases).

Have you experimented with other ways to connect to the server (SAMBA)? You also might want to see if there are other unnecessary hits to the network drive by watching the Activity Monitor when you are running just the bare minimum applications. Tune any apps to reduce "keep alive" signals and adjust their settings to avoid panic.

Wireless is convenient, but if you have multiple network connections and want speed, get a cable.

I'm using FUSE and SSHfs, and yes, I believe there are retry and timeout values I can set at connect time, I intend to play with these settings to see if I can improve matters.

However, if a connection times out or has to retry again, will this improve matters for me? Do you think I'll get improved responsiveness in various apps that I'm using to edit files stored on network volumes? These values will just help deal with network disruptions, but when my network is working fine will this have any effect?

Just thinking out loud here, I'm not even sure I'm thinking straight.

How can I adjust the keep alive signal in the apps I use? Is there a way to do this across the board in OS X, or would this stuff be specific to an app?

I have tried Appleshare. Unfortunately, I can't use Samba since the remote machine is not on my LAN, same goes for NFS.

Have you played with NFS? I was using it to connect to my other machine on my LAN years back, and at the time I had similar problems with the remote machine was unreachable causing OS X to wig out. Have things improved? Are there any ways to control these sorts of settings with NFS volumes? If so, I may try this again, my transfer speeds will probably be a little quicker without encrypting everything, and I don't need encryption between machines here on my home LAN.

Thanks so much for your help!

[besson3c]

Mulling this over some more, I'm thinking that OS X is just very chatty in how it deals with network volumes. If it is designed around Appletalk, this may explain a lot, because I believe I've read that this protocol is very chatty, although this guy in this thread asserts that this is not the case in OS X like it was in OS 9. I'm not certain why SSHfs seems much faster than Appletalk for me though, maybe Appletalk trying to read all the resource fork info?

I would really like it if Apple could do something like Gnome-VFS and allow more connection options other than Appletalk, Samba, and NFS. The FUSE thing is cool, abstracting file systems this way. If different sorts of connection protocols/file systems work best with different sorts of optimizations in how communication takes place, maybe this VFS-type layer could be optimized to run in various "modes" more effectively than what we have now? I'm pretty sure that Gnome-VFS doesn't require a kernel extension like FUSE does either, which would make it easier for third parties to add support for other file systems.

I know I'm probably really stretching and talking out of my ass with all of this with holes in my knowledge here, but I'm too lazy to do a whole lot of homework right now... my musings will do for tonight.

End of blog post.

[rehoot]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

How can I adjust the keep alive signal in the apps I use? Is there a way to do this across the board in OS X, or would this stuff be specific to an app?

I edited my post above and then saw that you replied to the prior version...

You don't have to edit all the keep-alive settings for random applications. If you are using a databae, then you would have to tune the database server and client to prepare for lags or broken connections. You don't have to touch your word processor or your wallpaper!

I haven't used NFS, but I have used SAMBA without encryption (it does have options for encryption, but I haven't used them). I have worked with servers that already had SAMBA, and I would connect with Finder from the Go->Connect to Server menue and enter something like smb://theserver/accounting/myfiles