Losing WAN connectivity with Safari/Mail/.Mac

[Dave Marsh]

Here's the issue, which appears unresolved in Panther. I have a DSL connection in my house, with two Macs online 24x7. One Mac is a 1Ghz G4 PM Tower w/896MB running 10.2.8, and the other is a 1GHz G4 iMac w/768MB running 10.3. Both are set to sync with my .Mac account every hour.

After four to seven days (never the same on each Mac) I'll get a notice that a .Mac sync effort has failed, so I'll check to see if my DSL connection is still up by having Safari attempt to connect to a website, or whether .Mac was simply down for maintenance. If Safari can't access the web, I'll check Mail as well, to see if I can retrieve new mail. Usually, when Safari is failing, so is Mail and .Mac synching.

However, here's the kicker...Internet Explorer continues to access the Internet just fine. My DSL connection remains stable, and if I go to the other Mac it's invariably fine as well, with its Safari/Mail/.Mac access continuing to work. A few days or a week later the other Mac will experience the same issue. This suggests to me that something core to Safari/Mail/.Mac Internet access is failing after a period of time, which is never the same on each Mac. While a simple reboot of the affected Mac restores everything to normalcy, I'd like to resolve the issue, not just live with a work-around. Both Macs are running DHCP and getting their IP addresses from our SpeedStream 5660 DSL Router. Access to other devices/computers on the house LAN remain fully functional.

I'm forced to wonder whether something in the webcore that Safari/Mail/.Mac uses, but which Internet Explorer does not, is at fault.

What puzzles me is that this issue has been so persistent, and on different Macs, and I've been unable to locate any discussion or reference on the web to others having this problem. Since this problem continues in Panther, I thought I'd post here to see if anyone else is experiencing this issue.

So, anyone?

 

[JohnGillilan]

I have the same issue. Safari/Mail/Software Update will all fail to work randomly. I'll have to check and see if explorer still works next time this happens. Its definitley a major issue.

There also seem so to be some bugs regarding my Keychain password storage for iChat, Mail, and Safari. Anyone else experience any problems here??

 

[Dave Marsh]

iDisk Synching Issue too?

Thanks for the feedback. It's nice to see I'm not the only one with this issue.

Interestingly, my Apple apps connectivity failed again this morning (while IE continued to work fine, again), which I discovered when I checked my mail and found this reply. This time when I attempted to restart I've also noticed that iDisk had failed to sync in Panther at the same time. I wonder if this is related to the Mirror agent issue some others have mentioned?

After a few minutes, I got the dialog box that said the Mirror agent had failed to quit, and had stopped the restart. I ultimately had to do a cold restart. However, upon restart I turned off iDisk automatic synching, so I should be able to restart gracefully next time.

It'll be nice when all these issues are resolved, perhaps just in time for the G5 laptops next summer?

 

[Dave Marsh]

Well, Safari et. al. Apple apps lost connectivity to the web again tonight, even though IE 5 continued to work just fine. I repaired permissions, so we'll see if that helped.

 

[Dave Marsh]

Keychain Issue

Concerning the keychain, I've only noticed that the keychain asks for me to confirm the password when it cannot connect to the appropriate server (which it can't when the Apple apps lose connectivity).

 

[Dave Marsh]

Repairing Permissions didn't help. Safari/Mail/etc. lost connectivity again this evening, even as Internet Explorer continued accessing the Internet just fine.

 

[filmpro]

Same problem here in november 2003

I've had a PB 17 two months now, just upgraded to panther. Every day, at odd times, suddenly mail, safari and explorer can't get on any site, even though the internet connect box shows that I am connected on the internet.

And to make matters even worse, EVERY time I try SOFTWARE UPDATE, it fails, but when I do it a second time, it works.

I have run Systemworks, repaired permissions---nothing works.

Hope someone can help. There are three reasons I think Apple is deteriorating:

1. When they released software update 10.2.8 for ONE DAY, and it create havoc for anyone who downloaded it. Apple took it down the next day, never explaining it or offering to help. My computer to this day has not acted the same.

2. When I read about all these white spots on the PB 15 machines

3. And this whole internet connect problem which is obviously huge.

Is it Dell or is it Apple. Sometimes I can't tell.

 

[rainman::|:|]

filmpro: your problem is not the problem at hand. explorer works for him, it does not for you. yours I would suspect is an issue with your entire connection.

and every hardware company has production defects. i'd rather light spots in the display over exploding laptop batteries (yes i remember this happened to apple in a couple of cases years ago)

pnw

 

[Dave Marsh]

The white spots on the new 15" Al PBs are due to pressure from spacers behind the LCD. This is a quality control issue that should be easy to resolve. These sorts of things happen with all new products, which is why I wait awhile for all the early adopters to note for Apple to sort out.

Double check that Internet Explorer doesn't work next time you lose connectivity in Safari...that's the crux of the issue, I believe...something's amiss in the Safari webcore on my Macs. Whether that's due to some corruption on my machines, or a bug in Jaguar/Panther, I don't know. I've been hoping for some feedback from the forums before I backup and do a 100% rebuild of the volume. If the problem is truly more widespread, there's no reason for me to spend a full day rebuilding the volume and reinstalling/reconfiguring everything.

 

[Dave Marsh]

Well, over the past month the connectivity issue with Safari/iSync/iDisk/FTP continues. Every two to three days the Apple apps lose Internet connectivity (including Watson), even as Internet Explorer continues to work fine. Yes, I tried going to new sites in IE during these burps before rebooting just to assure that IE isn't refreshing the page from its cache. It isn't. It's accessing the Internet just as it should. I can ping to sites on the Internet, as well, using Terminal.

I've tried changing the Energy Saver settings from Never to 3 hours, but that didn't help, but only delayed the outage from every day or two to every two to three days. I've also tried changing the MTU setting from 1500 to 1492, but again no luck. I've even tried turning off the hourly sync in iSync and doing syncs manually but that didn't help. Neither did disabling the auto sync with iDisk. Whatever it is, it's persistent and repeatable, and nothing I've tried seems to help.

I'm experiencing this on a summer 2003 17" iMac with 768MB RAM with a pristine installation of Panther. The Mac is connected to the Internet via a SpeedStream 5660 DSL modem. During these burps, the Mac can access everything else on the local network, and no other Macs/Windows PCs appear to be affected during that event. The one other Mac desktop on the network is running 10.2.8, and also experiences this problem, but its cycle seems to be 7 - 10 days. And, as I said, IE continues fine on the affected Mac during these events. A simple reboot restores the Mac apps to full functionality.

It's baffling.

Is anyone else out there on a home network connecting to the Internet via a DSL modem, and leaving their Mac on 24 hours a day? It's seems a lot of people would, but few seem to be reporting this issue. If you shutdown your Mac at night, you'll never experience this issue, because a reboot fixes the problem.