Does file sharing on OSX 10.5 work???
March 13, 2009 6:56 AM Subscribe
Is file sharing with Mac OS X 10.5 completely unreliable, or am I doing something wrong?
Let me explain my setup:
I have a Mac Mini running OSX 10.5. Into the Mac Mini I have a Drobo with 4 1TB hard drives, which shows up on the Mini as 2 separate volumes due to Drobo's 2TB limitation.
(I had the Drobo connected directly to my Airport Extreme before this but after hearing another MeFi question about someone who lost all Drobo data due to failing to properly eject the disks using the Drobo software, I moved the Drobo to a real computer).
The Mac Mini is connected to my Airport Extreme using an ethernet cable.
I then have 2 Windows PCs and 3 other Macs that are trying to reach files on this Drobo. On the Drobo I in fact keep my entire iTuens library and thus all my iTunes installs are set to use that as the music directory.
Here are the problems I am having:
1) At times the Drobo shares will just disappear for no apparent reason. I look at the Mac Mini and they are there, I see the Mac Mini on my Mac Finder window, but the only share I see available is my "Public Folder". Rebooting the Mini usually brings back up the Drobo shares.
1a) This is exceptionally a PITA because when this happens, iTunes can't find the Drobo share and then reverts the music directory back to the default downloading my podcasts where I don't want them and basically creating a manual mess for me to reintegrate these files.
2) There seem to be strange permissions errors that happen and I can find no logical reason for them. Examples:
a) I go to my Drobo share from my laptop and find half the files missing. In going to the Mac Mini it shows that my account should have full read and write access, but Everyone has no access. I try "Connect As..." and have no further luck.
b) One time I was copying a folder from my laptop to the drobo over the network. Halfway through the copy it aborted and told me I had no permissions. I went to the Mac Mini and it had locked out EVERYONE from that folder. I had to change permissions on the parent folder and have them cascade to unlock the folder's permissions. Of course, this happened seemingly spontaneously as I had copied half the files before the permissions error happened.
In the end, I am REALLY getting frustrated with this networking experience, and I'm about to just get a cheap Windows machine to start holding my file shares if this is what it comes to. But I can't imagine Mac networking is so...BROKEN. So is it something I'm doing wrong?
Let me explain my setup:
I have a Mac Mini running OSX 10.5. Into the Mac Mini I have a Drobo with 4 1TB hard drives, which shows up on the Mini as 2 separate volumes due to Drobo's 2TB limitation.
(I had the Drobo connected directly to my Airport Extreme before this but after hearing another MeFi question about someone who lost all Drobo data due to failing to properly eject the disks using the Drobo software, I moved the Drobo to a real computer).
The Mac Mini is connected to my Airport Extreme using an ethernet cable.
I then have 2 Windows PCs and 3 other Macs that are trying to reach files on this Drobo. On the Drobo I in fact keep my entire iTuens library and thus all my iTunes installs are set to use that as the music directory.
Here are the problems I am having:
1) At times the Drobo shares will just disappear for no apparent reason. I look at the Mac Mini and they are there, I see the Mac Mini on my Mac Finder window, but the only share I see available is my "Public Folder". Rebooting the Mini usually brings back up the Drobo shares.
1a) This is exceptionally a PITA because when this happens, iTunes can't find the Drobo share and then reverts the music directory back to the default downloading my podcasts where I don't want them and basically creating a manual mess for me to reintegrate these files.
2) There seem to be strange permissions errors that happen and I can find no logical reason for them. Examples:
a) I go to my Drobo share from my laptop and find half the files missing. In going to the Mac Mini it shows that my account should have full read and write access, but Everyone has no access. I try "Connect As..." and have no further luck.
b) One time I was copying a folder from my laptop to the drobo over the network. Halfway through the copy it aborted and told me I had no permissions. I went to the Mac Mini and it had locked out EVERYONE from that folder. I had to change permissions on the parent folder and have them cascade to unlock the folder's permissions. Of course, this happened seemingly spontaneously as I had copied half the files before the permissions error happened.
In the end, I am REALLY getting frustrated with this networking experience, and I'm about to just get a cheap Windows machine to start holding my file shares if this is what it comes to. But I can't imagine Mac networking is so...BROKEN. So is it something I'm doing wrong?
Noting that you should back up your data first, before reformatting.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:11 AM on March 13, 2009
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:11 AM on March 13, 2009
It's not going to be FAT16/32 due to partition limits.
Does your mac-mini or Drobo have disk-shutdown defaults or power-saving options? I've found that my NAS sometimes screws up permissions when coming out of sleep that requires rebooting.
posted by jmd82 at 8:12 AM on March 13, 2009
Does your mac-mini or Drobo have disk-shutdown defaults or power-saving options? I've found that my NAS sometimes screws up permissions when coming out of sleep that requires rebooting.
posted by jmd82 at 8:12 AM on March 13, 2009
It's not going to be FAT16/32 due to partition limits.
I'm not certain what the FAT32 partition limit is under OS X, but Windows XP has an artificially low limit. Microsoft did this to push people to use NTFS. So what is a limit under XP may not be a limit under OS X, but it may be 2 TB.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:49 AM on March 13, 2009
I'm not certain what the FAT32 partition limit is under OS X, but Windows XP has an artificially low limit. Microsoft did this to push people to use NTFS. So what is a limit under XP may not be a limit under OS X, but it may be 2 TB.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:49 AM on March 13, 2009
Response by poster: JMD, there WERE power saving options on the Mini which I have turned off but the partitions still magically disappear. The drobo has no such options.
posted by arniec at 10:03 AM on March 13, 2009
posted by arniec at 10:03 AM on March 13, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:04 AM on March 13, 2009