Everybody Staze…

Yesterday I went to the doctor and got a throat swab taken. After the lab tests, it came back negative for Strep, so, it’s a virus. yay. While the fever seems to have gone, my throat still hurts like hell, and the congestion can gotten worse. So, I’ve stayed home yesterday and today. Not sure about tomorrow yet.

Can’t really discuss anything that Apple has told me recently. Only that progress has been made, good or bad.

I haven’t done a whole lot the last few days other than sleep. Ah well…

So, my event filled Memorial Day weekend was truncated by a fever and sore throat yesterday, and now just a sore throat today. This has probably been coming on for a week or so since I’ve been having pretty bad congestion on my Eustachian tubes have been clogged.

The only things we did get done were to clean the garage (much needed, and it’s SOO much better now), to get the bed out of the office, and to run the soaker hose around the blueberries. The sawdust seems to do an amazing job at keeping the soil moist. Even after a week of no rain, and fairly warm days, sticking a finger down into the sawdust reveals moisture about 2 inches down. We figure running the soaker hose for 30 minutes once or twice a week should be plenty for the blue’s.

If my throat doesn’t get better tomorrow, I’m going to hit the doctors office. I have chores piling up (mowing the yard, for example). That, and having a sore throat is about the most uncomfortable symptom I can think of, since it’s nagging.

You might notice the “reviews” page that has shown up. I’m hoping to do some short, one off reviews on various items. We’ll see how that goes… look for the first one in a week or two.

Well, take care.

So, after my last post, I figured I’d give an update on that issue as well as other projects for the coming weekend.

As to my last post, there’s cautiously good news. My Apple SE escalated the case to AppleCare Enterprise, who have been very good about gathering the needed data, and keeping me updated as to the status of the issue. So, this last Tuesday, after a weekend of running with 10.5.7 and having a really crappy day Tuesday of trying to make things work, I decided I would downgrade back to 10.5.4. Well, after 3 hours of wiping the two servers, and installing 10.5.4 and things looking good, the next day we still had issues. Better, but not by much. So, I heard from AppleCare Enterprise that day (Wednesday, which I took off), and I got him the info he needed that night, and Thursday. Today, seemingly, Engineering thinks they have a fix. Bad news is, it might not make it into 10.5 but rather 10.6. But, they’re going to try. So, goodish news on that front.

Also for the past week (since 10.5.7), we’ve been having issues with a program called KeyAccess. Basically, this program allows us to “key” an application, and install it on all the computers in the building, then a server piece basically keeps track of how many instances of the programs are running, and keeps that inline with how many licenses we own. It’s the best thing since sliced bread. Job would be extra impossible without it. So, 10.5.7 comes out, I install it in 4 labs, and things seem to work. Only, I only tested on Intel Macs. On the PPCs, KeyAccess doesn’t launch on the client, and therefore applications won’t run. So, I email the company that makes the software (Sassafras Software, Inc), and tell them what’s up, and we think we have a fix, until the next day, when it’s still happening. At that point, I email back, and they say they’ve also had word from another location having the same issue. So, at home I email back and forth with one of their people who is 3 hours ahead of me about the issue. I send some logs, and some ls output, and he basically says they’ll try to work on it in-house the next day. So, next day, I’m working with them, and they get some more info, and finally get the issue reproducible in house. Today, they send me a new build that seems to work. Say it’s a timing issue (not sure quite what they mean by that, whether it’s coming up before networking, or whether it’s not syncing with the server)… so, 2 days, bug fix. Gotta really love small companies (I’m guessing they have probably 12-15 people, at most).

On the home front, we planted a medium sized Daphne ordora ‘Marginata’, which is a “typical” winter daphne, in the space formerly occupied by the very unhealthy Rhododendron (which, I placed in a pot, and is doing much better now). Hopefully we’ll have some nice, knock you on your ass, daphne to smell come next February.

Blueberries are doing about the same, though they seem far less impacted by the warmer weather we’ve been having recently than they have in the past. Be that the mulch, or the older plants, I can’t say. But they seem VERY happy.

This weekend is probably really going to be a fair amount of cleaning the garage, yard work, and various household tasks. I’m going to weatherstrip the front door, maybe trim the door so it’ll clear a rug, which also means changing the threshold. I don’t think I’ll be doing the PRV, but I might try to at least dig the old one out so I can tackle it next week.

Oh, btw, I got some new pedals for my bike. They’re Nashbar (http://www.nashbar.com/) Highlander Pedals, which are rebranded Wellgo WAM-D10′s (Review: here). They’ve got a nice big platform for normal shoe riding (with great spikes to bite into your shoes) on one side, and MTB clipless on the other. So far, I’m very happy. Previously I was using the stock Shimano clipless pedals with plastic clipless platforms, which sucked. Now if I could just get my saddle to not kill me. Oh, and btw, the Nashbar version was $30. The Wellgo ones are $50.

BTW, my bike is a 2001 Bianchi Volpe. I’ve replaced the Saddle with a more comfortable one, the pedals (now), and the tires with some 28 x 700 Gatorskins (hard, but smooth and nearly puncture proof).

That’s all for now… maybe I’ll post more this weekend.

Since January of this year, I’ve been actively seeing AppleFileServer crash regularly on a server at work. This server is our primary student account server, which at any given time has about 40-80 students logged in (network home directories).

Many days, AFP crashes several times. Every time, it’s the same error: kern_protection_failure. The thread that crashes is always talking about ByteRangeLockTreeKey. The only good thing about this problem, is seemingly AFP comes back up, and people’s computers reconnect (go autofs!). But this is a very poor consolation prize since for some people, this does cause a problem (anyone with Mail open usually gets an error about not being able to access their inbox, and do they want to rebuild, or quit, and some others occasionally get Final Cut project file corruption (this is rare, and only seems to impact those that have their autosave vault set to their home directory, and not the local HD)).

So, Apple was notified about this, officially, on Jan 22nd, 2009. Ticket number 6517425. After getting back to me and asking for some follow up info, they proceeded to roll the ticket into another one (6237420). This ticket, apparently, was not related, and after telling our Sales Engineer about this, he had them un-merge the tickets. Apple then rolled my bug into another ticket, 5859645. An even older ticket! From what I’ve gathered, this ticket may be related to some lower level issue than AFP… either filesystem level (perhaps ACLs?!?, or even general I/O level).

All the while, I am in contact with someone in Minnesota who is having my same issue, and has also opened tickets (and has the luxury of having AppleCare for 10.5 server (the high end AppleCare to boot). He had two open case numbers with them. He even had a regional service engineer come by and take a look at this system, which he said was set up correctly, and there’s nothing more they could do to help alleviate the problem until a patch was available.

So, also during this time, someone from London contacts me and says he’s having the same issue as well, and has a Developer account (pay for), so he tries a beta of 10.5.7. It does not fix the issue. Around this time, I downgrade to 10.5.4 hoping the issue will be lessened (long story short, it isn’t). But, a few weeks later, the gent from London says he’s fixed his problem by removing the “deny all” acl from all his share points and folders within share points. The “deny all” acl was added around 10.5.4 or so to mitigate something… no one’s sure what. Anyway, he then tells Apple about this “fix” and they reply that it’s an “unacceptable workaround” and that they’re working on a fix. This was April 9th he did this.

Well, so, 10.5.7 dropped last Tuesday (May 12th, 2009). I installed it on the server experiencing the issue Friday night, at about 2am. I didn’t have a single crash until Sunday, May 17th, 2009, at 5:52pm. Same exact error.

So, not only was Apple notified AT LEAST 110 days prior to 10.5.7 shipping, but they were notified of an actual “fix” about 33 days before hand. I really wish Apple’s bug database was public, so that I could post links to my bugs, but, alas it is not.

However, here are a few threads on the issue:

http://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=23311
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1975848
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8857952

At this point, I’m going to start actively poking buttons and prodding people until I get an answer. The last email I sent to devbugs@apple.com resulted in the “pat”, “There is no new information at this time”. What a load of horse crap. They know of at least one “option”… the least they could do would be to educate someone having this issue about that “fix” and it’s repercussions. Given the amount of time that 10.5.7 took to hit the street, and how far in advance I notified them about this bug, I have very little hope this will get fixed before 10.6. If we’re lucky, we’ll see the fix back ported, but I doubt it.

To cap this all off, the main reason I’m posting this is for posterity, as well as the hope that anyone else that has this bug can actually see they’re not alone! And that they can contact Apple and say “hey, I have some bug numbers here of others having this issue”. If you are having this issue, please, don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll work to get you in contact with others having this issue, or with someone at Apple that will actually listen.

UPDATE 1: Today I got a call from the local Education SE, who has created an escalation of this issue. Assuming it gets signed off by his boss, I should be hearing from Apple Engineering in the next few days… which is good since AFP crashed 5 times today. I have decided, in the interim, to remove the “group:everyone deny delete” ACL from many of the home folders on the server. Hopefully this will ease the problem. We’ll have to see. And I’ll post more once I hear from Engineering.

Just thought I’d post and give a quick update on the last two days.

Yesterday, Tara and I tackled a long overdue project that I’ve been dreading since it involved a bunch of time in the crawl space (well, 30-45 minutes). We replaced the dryer exhaust vent. The old one was one of those wedge shaped ones that directed all the flow downward, and had a flapper below the “wedge” that keeps outside air and critters out. Well, the vent was situated right above the ground (it comes out from one of the crawl space vents). So, the vented air goes right into the ground, and if there was any soil/debris buildup in the herb garden, it would block the flow of exhaust. The other problem being the flapper had long since stopped working/been clogged with lint and debris. So outside air came down the vent into the laundry room, making it even colder. So, we replaced the vent exhaust with a modern louver style (one of these). The advantage is supposedly they have better flow, they don’t blow down into the ground, and they actually close, so no more air coming down the vent pipe. YAY!!!!

Then today, the other project I’ve been meaning to do: repair the front sillcock (a frost-free Nibco 90). Back when we bought the house, I noticed that if the sillcock is open, but there is no flow (a sprayer on the hose, a Y with both sides closed, etc), it would leak at the stem. Opening it up, the packing was all torn up. So, I tried to rebuild it at the local hardware shop with various parts. Afterward, it wouldn’t leak, but it was a bitch to turn on and off, and it didn’t turn on all full flow unless you opened the valve all the way. So, this year, while wandering around the local hardware store, I noticed they had rebuild kits for “Fu San” Frost free sillcocks (not that I can find such a thing exists… the receipt, however, says “Flor Repair Kit”) that looked like they had the right parts. So, I pulled it apart again, and brought in the stem. Then at the store, put it all together with the new parts. Similar to this. Turned the water back on, and viola, it works like brand new! And the vacuum breaker seems to work again (it was kinda weird between the first time I fixed it, and now). Cost of repair kit, $2.99.

Other than that, Tara and I are going to be on cleaning duty the next day or so since Tara’s mom and aunt’s are coming to visit. Hopefully we’ll be ready for them. We’ve been struggling to control a sugar ant problem in our guest room (of all places, that doesn’t ever have food in it). Here’s hoping it’s somewhat better by then.

So, there it is. Have a great weekend!