sometimes users unable to save - network home folder environment

[woneal]

Help!

We have a believed-to-be robust (1gb to the desktop, 2gb (link
aggregated) at the server) AFP based network home folder environment.
The server is a G5 w/ 6gb ram, running 10.4.8. There is a fail over
server as well.

Ocassionally (meaing just enough to get the president yelling at us
far too loudly), when users open or create documents, they are not
allowed to save. It seems to happen more frequently in Excel, but
we've also seen it in Word. Office version is currently at 11.3.2.

The user side error messages vary between "could not save" and "too
many files open."

While we don't use many other apps other than MS Office apps, we do
use Mail, which doesn't report any problems, saving files/attachments
out of webmail in Firefox, which also doesn't report problems.

There is nothing in the system log or the console, and the AFP log has
no clear indication that a problem has occured; however, the AFP log
is HUGE.

The only way out is to close the unsaved document, reopen, re-make the
changes, and save the document. Re-opening the app is not required.

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

Will O'Neal
http://www.4macsolutions.com

 

[woneal]

OK, it just happened, and we've got a lot more information.

1. The problem occurred in Excel
2. Word was open at the time.
3. There was no problem saving a file based on a template in Word.
4. we created a new document in text edit and that saved just fine.
5. we created a new document in Excel and that saved just fine.

All the while the existing problematic document refused to save or
save as....

we opened disk utility and repaired permissions; we watched for
strange things in activity monitory; we quite the database daemon just
for kicks; we quit all other apps running on the machine. none had any
affect.

right now, we are waiting to see if a little time doesn't make the
problem go away.

and we did find the error in the AFP log - -5006, which Google says is
"afpDenyConflict" - specified open/deny modes conflict with current
open modes.

which doesn't really help us.

Will

 

[woneal]

OK, more information.

Selecting Save Workspace saved something; shortly after selecting (and
OKing) "Save Workspace," Excel said "would you like to save the
document" and saying yes let us save the document.

So next time it happens, we'll try the save workspace first, to see,
but at this time the problem either goes away with time or by
selecting Save Workspace. More next time the error pops up, but if you
have any input, we'd love to hear it.

one more thing I should have mentioned in the first post: thinking
maybe the file was locked, we navigated to the ~/Documents folder,
manually renamed the document, and tried to save and save as again;
still no joy, we could not save that particular document at all.

Will

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Will:

See if any of this applies:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/CantSaveToServer.html

Cheers

OK, more information.

Selecting Save Workspace saved something; shortly after selecting (and
OKing) "Save Workspace," Excel said "would you like to save the
document" and saying yes let us save the document.

So next time it happens, we'll try the save workspace first, to see,
but at this time the problem either goes away with time or by
selecting Save Workspace. More next time the error pops up, but if you
have any input, we'd love to hear it.

one more thing I should have mentioned in the first post: thinking
maybe the file was locked, we navigated to the ~/Documents folder,
manually renamed the document, and tried to save and save as again;
still no joy, we could not save that particular document at all.

Will

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John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410