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From: larry@slacvm.slac.stanford.edu (Larry Sherman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps,comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Really Annoying AppleShare Crashes
Message-ID: <1289@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 6 Mar 91 20:01:38 GMT
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In article <5866@husc6.harvard.edu> siegel@endor.uucp (Rich Siegel) writes:
> For a long time, I've been having an extremely annoying problem with our 
> inhouse AppleShare server. I've tried a variety of remedies, but nothing
> helps.
> 
> The System:
> 
>         Mac IIcx
>         System 6.0.5
>         EtherTalk 1.2, installed by the Asante Ethernet installer 2.0.6
>         8MB RAM
>         600MB external hard disk, formatted and partitioned with
>                 SilverLining 5.26
>         AppleShare 2.0.1
>         Apple CD-ROM software 3.0.1
> 
> The Symptoms:
>         
>         Every morning (but never when I'm around), the server crashes.
>         Before I installed TMON, the crash would be in the form of a
>         System Error 02, System Error 29, or just a system freeze.
>         Sometimes when the system crashes, one or more of the mounted
>         partitions gets damaged, probably because of AppleShare's
>         insistence on turning up the Apple RAM cache to a ridiculously
>         high value.

I can't be sure that my problem was caused by anything similar, but just 
in case, I'd like to share it with you and the net.  I have a IIx running 
6.0.5.  I replaced my Original 160MB hard drive with a 345MB Maxtor.  
After a while, I started noting problems with slowness in the finder.  It 
was pointed out to me that the finder can only handle so many resources 
without having problems; it was suggested that I use desktop manager.  I 
did this, and the finder sped up, but I began to crash more often.  
Someone else pointed out that desktop manager was only for use with 
fileservers, and that I should remove it from my system and, instead, 
partition the hard drive so that there would be a manageable number of 
files on each partition.

I happened to have a piece of software called MultiDisk, which is put out 
by Alsoft, the same vendor who makes MasterJuggler, which I've been using 
for years.  MultiDisk evidently makes what is called a "soft" partition; 
i.e. the original drive remains sized as it ever was, but it contains a 
large file which appears to the user as a separate partition.  

After installing MultiDisk, I began to crash more and more.  Ultimately, I 
was crashing 30 to 40 times a day.  The only thing which seemed to help 
was kicking the CPU.  It didn't help much.

Eventually, I spent what seemed to be forever backing the drive up (my 
Syquest cartridges keep sustaining directory damage and failing the Norton 
Disk Doctor test).  Finally, I reformatted the drive and partitioned it 
using the manufacturer's supplied partionioning software (SCSI Commander). 
 This made a "hard" partition, rather than the "soft" or logical 
partition.  Evidently, somewhere along the line, I cleared up the problem. 
 I had not quite known where to look, because I run a fair amount of inits 
& cdevs, and it was certainly possible that I had a conflict; it turned 
out that even with just several "essential" inits I was still crashing.

The crashes were seldom bombs with a system error, but generally a screen 
which would allow me to move the cursor, but not do anything else; or, I'd 
be copying a file, and I'd get a frozen watch cursor.

Other things I had attempted were
*) increasing the system heap to allow about 1mb free space.
*) Increasing the open files limit to over 100.
*) Increasing the finder memory to over 500K.
Forgetting any of these steps could cause a crash on an otherwise healthy 
system.
*)rebuilding the system, after first copying my installed DA's and Fonts 
to another file.
* )Rebuilding the desktop
*)Zapping the PRAM
*)Running Norton Utilities many many many times.  The crashes would tend 
to destroy the directory of the disk.

In your case, you might check with the drive manufacturer to make sure 
that your partitioning software isn't the culprit.  We had a similar 
problem on our fileserver caused by using one type of partitioning 
software; repartioning using another brand seemed to clear things up.  
Good luck!