File Sharing Difficulties Frustrate Tiger Admins

rmallico wrote in to mention a story currently running on Eweek about technical difficulties sites running Tiger are experiencing. From the article: "A number of sites running Apple's new 'Tiger' operating system are experiencing problems with SMB file sharing and authentication with Microsoft's Active Directory, Ziff Davis Internet News has learned. Although Apple Computer Inc.'s Tiger increases support for Server Message Block file sharing and Active Directory, several sources say that the Finder fails to log on to Windows and Linux Samba file servers."

Comments

Oh, right, error code -36!

[xiando]

The most interesting thing I noticed in the article was actually that the error message for the Connect to Server failure is "error code -36". A friend of mine who uses Mac OS X has always complained much about how the Mac never tells you anything about what is actually wrong, only gives you a number that is in no way useful for solving the problem. It is amazing this is still the case in Tiger, what in the world would be wrong with giving at least a tiny bit of information or just a hint of what is wrong? Even the good old Windows blue screen is more informative than "error code 4".

Re:Oh, right, error code -36!

[Megane]

Those low negative number error codes date back to 1984 with the original release of the Macintosh, but usually only a few come up. When you see them with OS X, you know you've got something with roots in the old days, like the HFS file system. And then there are the larger negative numbers (usually 4 digits) from when blocks of error codes were assigned willy-nilly to stuff like the Appletalk network stack and AFP file sharing.

And -36 doesn't help even if you know what it means, because it's just a generic "I/O error". Originally it was for media problems (like an unreadable floppy), usually accompanied by strange sounds from your disk drive, but for a network file system it's kind of silly. So even the old-timers say "yeah, that sure tells me a lot".

Other -3x range errors include file not found (-34?), end of file (-39?), and file name too long. Another good one is -50, parameter error. Well, duuuuuuh, which parameter? What's wrong with it?

The worst one to see is -127. That one means your file system data structures are in deep doodoo.

But seriously, the days of 400K floppy disks are long gone. It's total laziness that nobody bothers to print a text error message along with the number. I've been doing that in my own code since the days of 800K floppies. Even printing out the ten most common error messages as text helps most of the time.

Here's a bet:

[Capt'n Hector]

Whatever the issue is, my guess is Apple will have it fixed within the month. It's possible they will have a patch out by the end of next week. It's just a bug, and last time I heard, unless active measures need to be taken by network admins NOW to shore up potential security issues, bugs aren't news. Major new OS versions will always have wrinkles to iron out, stop the presses!

Re:Here's a bet:

[Graymalkin]

So, say it worked great in all beta builds until the gold master. It had been tested and came up green so in latter beta builds it wasn't tested anymore because it worked. Then say sometime between the last beta build and the GM (which are a few builds apart) a butterfly flapped its wings bug caused SMB mounting to break in Finder. Errors happen because systems are complex and there's dependancies that depend on more dependancies, a error in the chain can cause really weird errors in seemingly unrelated parts of the system.

Your car analogy is flawed. New cars do have bugs when they roll off the lot. You would be really surprised at the number of real issues every car or every batch of cars has off the factory floor. Many times however these flaws and bugs don't crop up and cause a noticeable problem for a long time if ever. There are some problems that do crop up quickly however. It would be one thing if the manufacturer ignored this and went on its merry way. It is entirely another if they repair your car for you. I just had the dome light fixed in my car because of a faulty latch, should I be screaming about the manufacturer not having any QA? No.

The car analogy also falls flat when compared to something as easily changed as computer software. A patch containing the repair can be very small and be distributed to millions of affected users very quickly. If your car is in the shop for a week you're out one car. If SMB shares don't show up in Finder's Browse window properly you're not out SMB shares as you can work around the problem if need be.

Re:Here's a bet:

[eraserewind]

It had been tested and came up green so in latter beta builds it wasn't tested anymore because it worked.

No offense, but what the hell sort of software engineering practice do you call that?

Re:A typical slashdot response.

[elecngnr]

I will just say at the beginning of this post that I am a fan of Apple products. I try not to jump in on every Apple story on this site because I think there is enough preaching to the choir on this site. Having said that, I will continue on this thread. I have used Windows machines for many years in addition to using Apple. The reason why there is no huge uproar, in my opinion, is because I know it wll be fixed soon. I also know that the fix will make the product better (i.e. it will NOT be SP2). It is not so much that we are brain dead followers....I would not just drink some kool aid if Steve asks me to....I think many of us have just had good experiences with their products. I upgraded to Tiger on Monday of this week. I expected some hiccups and there have been a few. However, they are not major hiccups and I do not expect to be dealing with them for long.

No Admin worth their salt installs a new OS

[Beebos]

If an "admin" installs a brand spanking new OS immediately after release, that admin should have his pocket protector taken away from him. Particularly if one is working in a business or other mission critical environment, installing new OS without giving time for new bugs to be discovered and addressed is a sure sign incompetance.

Re:No Admin worth their salt installs a new OS

[caseih]

This is surely true, although Apple apparently does not think so. Recently I received two e-mails from Apple's development team regarding bug reports that I and others have filed for Panther Server regarding critical OpenLDAP bugs. In a nutshell the e-mails said, "we think the bugs don't exist in Tiger Server. Please upgrade to Tiger Server and tell us if this is the case." I was stunned. I sent them a strongly worded response to tell them that this was not acceptable. Apple just doesn't yet understand what it takes to produce Enterprise software. We need very long support lifetimes (3-5 years minimum) and upgrading major OS versions outside of normal hardware replacement cycles (with proper testing) is *never* done except in extraordinary circumstances. Right now I am very unhappy with Apple. Does anyone even know what the life expentancy of Panther Server is? What about Tiger? I can't find this information anywhere and Apple has not yet responded to my queries. Judging by the terrible LDAP problems I had with OS 10.3 (not fixed until 10.3.9!) I am in no hurry to put Tiger Server into production. I learned my lesson the hard way.

Now that AFP support under linux is much better, I'm almost certainly going to go back to Linux for my main file servers. At least it is a known quantity.

Wait a minute...

[catdevnull]

Hey, I like Macs. I think Apple rules the roost in the OS world, etc. But hey, reality check:
SysAdmin Rule #1: If you depend on it, and it works fine the way it is, don't mess with it. [If it ain't broke...]
SysAdmin Rule #2: If you want to mess with it, test it before deploying it.

Why the hell did people install a .0 release and expect that it would not be without bugs? I say if any sysadmins out there were silly enough to make a hasty upgrade before testing (ignoring the above caveats) they deserve the problems they're experiencing.

We waited to deploy WinXP until the first service pack was released--and that saved our ass. I think it's ignorant to ignore that principle on the Mac side as well--esp. with a major update.

Early adopters are unpaid beta testers. Congratulations--you found the bugs!

Apple or not...

[phillymjs]

...you're a fool and deserve everything you get if you put a week-old OS on production hardware without doing non-production testing or having a fall-back.

If you insist, however, do it right. Prep a build of the new OS and put it on its own hard drive in the machine of your one or two most clueful end users. Let them beat on it for a while and document their problems/questions as they try to do their work. Once in a while go through the list and address their fixable issues. If they happen upon a show-stopper, they simply boot from the drive with the old build on it and use that until the next service release appears. Then you apply it, and test again. Repeat as necessary until the number of issues is low enough that you can confidently deploy the new OS build to all end users.

I have used this technique to great effect at several of my Mac clients, though I don't even consider giving them the newest OS until the .2 or .3 service releases have been out for a few weeks. A couple of my clients used to question this conservative method until some renegade users bought and installed Panther right after its release (without authorization from anyone) and ended up being basically unable to work until I reverted them to the standard OS/applications build.

As for OS X Server, that gets tested in my company's lab and on my bench at home from the day we get it, but it doesn't get rolled out anywhere until .4, and even then we clone the old drive to a FireWire drive before upgrading, just to be safe.

~Philly