[karbon]

Mac OS X has become a relatively polished system by now, and I like where Apple is headed, which in many ways seems to be in the opposite way of Microsoft.

But still, OS X is far from perfect. It has several drawbacks, and one of the major ones is the horrendous "network inactivity" lockup problem.

Let me give you an example: If I have a computer on my network mounted on the desktop in OS X (the Finder), and I decide to pull the plug, without ejecting the network volume first, I get a total hang in Finder with the spinning rainbow of death. Okay, you only got what you deserved, some might say, but the fact is that OS X should handle this much more intelligent. Why not bring up a "timeout" box, or a progress bar saying "waiting for connection to re-establish" or something, instead of just hanging the whole Finder up? What's even worse is if I try to force quit the Finder, it won't relaunch, and it even renders all the other applications unusable.

So the only workaround is to actually force reboot the machine. This is NOT how it should be, and I'm sorry to say that Windows (2000 or XP) handles this situation much better.

Also, the problem of loosing a network connection does not only happen when I pull the physical plug from the my computer. It can also happen when the server dies, the internet connection is lost or if I'm out of range from my airport base station. Actually, these kinds of situations happen all the time.

So please, Apple, focus a little on this, and I'm sure you'll get it right. After all we'll soon be in 2003...

[Millennium]

I have this problem sometimes on my AirPOrt network at home, so believe me, I feel your pain. There really shouldn't be a need to SPROD the Finder over a dropped connection.

But I'd have to give the title of most annoying issue to menu responsivity in general rather than this. Quartz isn't entirely to blame for this one, either; the way OSX handles menus, they are only loaded into RAM the first time they are used. While this is a neat trick for saving RAM and a little time when a program first launches, it comes at a not insignificant performance hit, which manifests as unresponsive menus.

[mrtew]

Originally posted by karbon:
Also, the problem of loosing a network connection does not only happen when I pull the physical plug from the my computer. It can also happen when the server dies, the internet connection is lost or if I'm out of range from my airport base station.

Your finder locks up when you go out of range of your AirPort base station? If that's what you meant to say, I think there may be something wrong with your computer. I go out of range all the time, and pull the plug on my AirPort, etc. and never have any problems. And for what it's worth when the server dies at work everyone's Windows2000 computer locks up instantly. You hear a whole room full of people say 'Dooohhhhhh' at the same time. And not just the 'fiinder' or 'explorer' or whatever that thing is, the entire computer locks up. I don't know if XP is better though.

[karbon]

Originally posted by mrtew:
Your finder locks up when you go out of range of your AirPort base station? If that's what you meant to say, I think there may be something wrong with your computer. I go out of range all the time, and pull the plug on my AirPort, etc. and never have any problems. And for what it's worth when the server dies at work everyone's Windows2000 computer locks up instantly. You hear a whole room full of people say 'Dooohhhhhh' at the same time. And not just the 'fiinder' or 'explorer' or whatever that thing is, the entire computer locks up. I don't know if XP is better though.

I if I have a network volume mounted on my desktop, and airport drops it's connection, the Finder hangs. If I try to force quit Finder that doesn't even work, so most times I have to reboot.

On Windows this is not an issue, you'll just get a "lost connection" error after a short timeout period. Sure, if you are logged into the Windows domain you might have to restart Windows machines as well, but I'm talking about just mounted network volumes here...

[chris v]

Lately, my Finder has been losing the "Open With..." contextual menu item. I have to quit and relaunch the Finder all the time to get it back.

And yes, the one time I shut down a server while accessing its files, it locked up hard. I've learned to not do that-- but a "lost connection" dialog would be nice in such cases.

CV

[edddeduck]

Your machine will actually become unstuck after a long wait normally (Once it took 15mins) I had to wait as my Dissertaion was unsaved in the background.

This bug could be fixed easily (or at least improved) by putting a lower timeout and MULTITHREADING the finder so things like Connect To... when open no longer freeze the finder and the whole system.

p.s. People who have not seen this are lucky as I can 100% recreate this over ethernet, airport and modem on any machine running OS X.

Cheers Edwin

[suhail]

That is a very annoying issue indeed, even OS9 handeled it better.
And yes a tiny timeout code would fix this.
I remember this issue since OSX10.0 and it's still here!

[mrl14]

Both OS 9, X and WinXP handle this horribly.

Nothing you can do. We rely on the internet and network connections and if they aren't there when your system boots up it's going to hang for a bit.

[snerdini]

I also have to deal w/ this problem at work, and is very annoying...but it seems to be slightly better than it was under 10.1. At least sometimes under Jag if the server (that is hosting the share) dies, and I try to open the share, it just disappears. Other times, it just locks up my whole computer as stated above.

[Cipher13]

I hate this problem.

It's because OSX tries to reconnect to the servers, with a ridiculously long timeout setting. In the meantime, the Finder hangs. Heh. Also, it can be hours before the Finder realises the connection has been severed, and tries to reconnect.

I get this loads at work. I switch my system between a whole lot of different networks, without ever unplugging it (subnet switching, essentially); internal network, to aDSL, to ISDN, and so forth.

Pisses me off majorly.

[mmurray]

Originally posted by karbon:
[/B]
[snip]

Let me give you an example: If I have a computer on my network mounted on the desktop in OS X (the Finder), and I decide to pull the plug, without ejecting the network volume first, I get a total hang in Finder with the spinning rainbow of death. Okay, you only got what you deserved, some might say, but the fact is that OS X should handle this much more intelligent. Why not bring up a "timeout" box, or a progress bar saying "waiting for connection to re-establish" or something, instead of just hanging the whole Finder up? What's even worse is if I try to force quit the Finder, it won't relaunch, and it even renders all the other applications unusable.

[snip]
[/B]

I agree with all the other posts that this is a real pain. But if I leave mine long enough it will throw up a dialogue box saying its unable to mount the volume. Once I get that I can click OK and get on whatever it was I trying to do.
But it seems to take 10-15 minutes before doing that.

My problem is that I take my laptop to work and mount my desktop
machines HD on it. If I come home without dismounting and connect
back to the internet the work firewall is now between my laptop and my work machine and so its in accessible :-(

Does anyone know if that timeout can be got at somewhere via the command line or in a Pref's file?

Does Apple still have a web site for posting bugs like this ?

Michael

[snerdini]

Originally posted by mmurray:


Does Apple still have a web site for posting bugs like this ?

Michael

Apple's feedback page

[Lew]

Originally posted by chris v:
Lately, my Finder has been losing the "Open With..." contextual menu item. I have to quit and relaunch the Finder all the time to get it back.

Are you using FruitMenu? I found that I had the same problem until I unchecked 'FruitMenu Contextual Menus Enabled'

[-Q-]

A great "feature" of OS X. I thought 10.2.3 corrected it, but a full day at work corrected that erroneous assumption.

Glad to see it doesn't justg annoy me...although I'd rather have a fix than the company.

[LK]

hi all,

anyone know if the super long timeouts with share reconnect attempts is fixed in 10.2.4? i've been holding out on 10.2.4 since i've been reading some horror stories from upgraders. (or has apple has added a "trying to reconnect" dialog, etc?)

or alternatively, has anyone figured out how to change the timeout parameter in the terminal, netinfo, or wherever?

can't seem to find any reference to this problem in the forums except this thread. if i missed any answers, oops and thanks for any help/redirect.

thanks,
lk

[cpac]

I must say I don't get this at all with mounted SMB shares: I frequently forget I've logged into one of them, shut my PB, go to class (outside of Airport range), open up the PB and continue normally...