10.3(.9) - Stalling Left and Right When Connected to Server

[Makosuke]

I'm working on an oddball problem at work and thought maybe someone might have seen something similar.

Situation: Recently installed an XServe and have started moving everybody's data over to it. A little slower than running locally, but a whole heck of a lot easier to manage/share/back up.

Problem: One computer, and only one, has been freezing about twice a day. And, of course, it's the boss'. Everything seems to be identical to the rest of the computers, yet his is the only one freezing.

Symptoms: Appears to be going into the state that OSX occasionally does when a mounted disk isn't responding but the OS doesn't just remove it; applications begin to stick on the SBOD one after another until the entire machine is stalled. Soft-restart attempts generally fail as does force quitting.

The computer was fine before the minor workflow change, a wreck after. During these episodes the server is, apparently, still mounted and accessable--the one time I witnesed a freeze I could browse it until the Finder died too. The logfiles don't show anything interesting that I noticed.

The only differences I can come up with is that the computer is a quicksilver, unlike most of the others, and that he runs Classic frequently (still uses a HYPERCARD STACK for his address book--change-averse, shall we say), but he insists Classic isn't always open when the stalls occurr, though it's still my prime suspect.

Has anybody else seen issues like this? Any suggestions of what to check?

 

[varmit]

I'm working on an oddball problem at work and thought maybe someone might have seen something similar.

Situation: Recently installed an XServe and have started moving everybody's data over to it. A little slower than running locally, but a whole heck of a lot easier to manage/share/back up.

Problem: One computer, and only one, has been freezing about twice a day. And, of course, it's the boss'. Everything seems to be identical to the rest of the computers, yet his is the only one freezing.

Symptoms: Appears to be going into the state that OSX occasionally does when a mounted disk isn't responding but the OS doesn't just remove it; applications begin to stick on the SBOD one after another until the entire machine is stalled. Soft-restart attempts generally fail as does force quitting.

The computer was fine before the minor workflow change, a wreck after. During these episodes the server is, apparently, still mounted and accessable--the one time I witnesed a freeze I could browse it until the Finder died too. The logfiles don't show anything interesting that I noticed.

The only differences I can come up with is that the computer is a quicksilver, unlike most of the others, and that he runs Classic frequently (still uses a HYPERCARD STACK for his address book--change-averse, shall we say), but he insists Classic isn't always open when the stalls occurr, though it's still my prime suspect.

Has anybody else seen issues like this? Any suggestions of what to check?

If you have the hardware test CD, I would run it to make sure everything with the Mac is ok internally. Maybe swap out third party RAM if you have any installed. Then might look at the different programs that he runs, and if classic stays on in the background even when he isn't using it. When its stalling but still usable, open Activity monitor and see which program is taking up memory or is just acting unusal and try to kill it. Check the Hypercard Stack website to see if there is any info on it being used in classic and causing the same problems. Maybe Classic can't work with his data being over on the server, something of that nature.

 

[Makosuke]

Thanks for the suggestions, varmit (that sounds amusingly Wild West to me, for some reason).

If you have the hardware test CD, I would run it to make sure everything with the Mac is ok internally. Maybe swap out third party RAM if you have any installed.

Already thought of and tried this--no love. And I didn't manage to get Activity Monitor to launch, so that didn't help. Like you suggested, I'm trying to figure a way to try and keep Classic out of the picture to see if that's the issue.

Check the Hypercard Stack website to see if there is any info on it being used in classic and causing the same problems.

No offense intended at all, but this is a very funny suggestion. The Hypercard website is, of course, Apple.com--Hypercard was a really neat "programming for the masses" tool developed in the early days of the Mac and was very popular through the mid 90s. The Address Book stack (basically a Hypercard "program") shipped with new Macs on OS6 and 7, and shockingly enough it still works ok, albeit a little out of place on OSX (so old it's black and white, for one thing).