siegel@endor.uucp (Rich Siegel) (03/04/91)
For a long time, I've been having an extremely annoying problem with our inhouse AppleShare server. I've tried a variety of remedies, but nothing helps. The System: Mac IIcx System 6.0.5 EtherTalk 1.2, installed by the Asante Ethernet installer 2.0.6 8MB RAM 600MB external hard disk, formatted and partitioned with SilverLining 5.26 AppleShare 2.0.1 Apple CD-ROM software 3.0.1 The Symptoms: Every morning (but never when I'm around), the server crashes. Before I installed TMON, the crash would be in the form of a System Error 02, System Error 29, or just a system freeze. Sometimes when the system crashes, one or more of the mounted partitions gets damaged, probably because of AppleShare's insistence on turning up the Apple RAM cache to a ridiculously high value. TMON, when installed, reports an Address Error when trying to RTS from what looks like a _RecoverHandle patch in the system heap. The last routine which appears in an A6 stack crawl is called "DRAWSTAT". (How nice of Apple to provide Macsbug names in finished software, so that we can debug it! :-)) What I've Tried: Installing a new system from both the original AppleShare distribution and virgin system floppies; I've tried versions 6.0.3, 6.0.4, and 6.0.5. None makes a difference. Along with this I've tried reinstalling the AppleShare software from the original floppies. No dice. I've tried running without the CD-ROM mounted. No dice. I've tried installing more RAM, increasing the installed memory from 5MB to 8MB makes no difference. I've tried installing a little INIT to grow the system heap at startup time. No difference. When the server crashes, there's plenty of space in the system heap. I'm at the end of my rope on this one. This is a production server, which is the mainstay of our office network, and to have it crash as often as it does is unacceptable. If anyone has any idea as to what's going on, and how to correct it, please mail me or post to comp.sys.mac.apps or comp.sys.mac.misc. Not only will I be eternally grateful, I'll also send you some goodies. :-) R. Rich Siegel Symantec Languages Group Internet: siegel@endor.harvard.edu "I was just trying to be subtle. That's my job, isn't it?"
larry@slacvm.slac.stanford.edu (Larry Sherman) (03/07/91)
In article <5866@husc6.harvard.edu> siegel@endor.uucp (Rich Siegel) writes: > For a long time, I've been having an extremely annoying problem with our > inhouse AppleShare server. I've tried a variety of remedies, but nothing > helps. > > The System: > > Mac IIcx > System 6.0.5 > EtherTalk 1.2, installed by the Asante Ethernet installer 2.0.6 > 8MB RAM > 600MB external hard disk, formatted and partitioned with > SilverLining 5.26 > AppleShare 2.0.1 > Apple CD-ROM software 3.0.1 > > The Symptoms: > > Every morning (but never when I'm around), the server crashes. > Before I installed TMON, the crash would be in the form of a > System Error 02, System Error 29, or just a system freeze. > Sometimes when the system crashes, one or more of the mounted > partitions gets damaged, probably because of AppleShare's > insistence on turning up the Apple RAM cache to a ridiculously > high value. I can't be sure that my problem was caused by anything similar, but just in case, I'd like to share it with you and the net. I have a IIx running 6.0.5. I replaced my Original 160MB hard drive with a 345MB Maxtor. After a while, I started noting problems with slowness in the finder. It was pointed out to me that the finder can only handle so many resources without having problems; it was suggested that I use desktop manager. I did this, and the finder sped up, but I began to crash more often. Someone else pointed out that desktop manager was only for use with fileservers, and that I should remove it from my system and, instead, partition the hard drive so that there would be a manageable number of files on each partition. I happened to have a piece of software called MultiDisk, which is put out by Alsoft, the same vendor who makes MasterJuggler, which I've been using for years. MultiDisk evidently makes what is called a "soft" partition; i.e. the original drive remains sized as it ever was, but it contains a large file which appears to the user as a separate partition. After installing MultiDisk, I began to crash more and more. Ultimately, I was crashing 30 to 40 times a day. The only thing which seemed to help was kicking the CPU. It didn't help much. Eventually, I spent what seemed to be forever backing the drive up (my Syquest cartridges keep sustaining directory damage and failing the Norton Disk Doctor test). Finally, I reformatted the drive and partitioned it using the manufacturer's supplied partionioning software (SCSI Commander). This made a "hard" partition, rather than the "soft" or logical partition. Evidently, somewhere along the line, I cleared up the problem. I had not quite known where to look, because I run a fair amount of inits & cdevs, and it was certainly possible that I had a conflict; it turned out that even with just several "essential" inits I was still crashing. The crashes were seldom bombs with a system error, but generally a screen which would allow me to move the cursor, but not do anything else; or, I'd be copying a file, and I'd get a frozen watch cursor. Other things I had attempted were *) increasing the system heap to allow about 1mb free space. *) Increasing the open files limit to over 100. *) Increasing the finder memory to over 500K. Forgetting any of these steps could cause a crash on an otherwise healthy system. *)rebuilding the system, after first copying my installed DA's and Fonts to another file. * )Rebuilding the desktop *)Zapping the PRAM *)Running Norton Utilities many many many times. The crashes would tend to destroy the directory of the disk. In your case, you might check with the drive manufacturer to make sure that your partitioning software isn't the culprit. We had a similar problem on our fileserver caused by using one type of partitioning software; repartioning using another brand seemed to clear things up. Good luck!