Subject: [netatalk-admins] Strange "file doubling" problem

From: Glen Shere <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 19:29:22 -0400 (EDT)

Hello netatalk-admins,

We're using netatalk, version 990130, on Solaris 2.6+patchcluster 8/99. 
We've applied the three available patches (afpd-bfree.diff,
afpd-macos8.diff, solariseagain.diff). 

Early last week, we began experiencing a strange problem with the volumes
mounted via netatalk: for some files, a second entry in the finder dialog
box would appear briefly, then disappear, every ten seconds or so.

The network traffic related to this is so significant that our network
drowns in ethertalk broadcasts approximately once per day, forcing our
netatalk server down....

We've double checked things like the stability of our seed router,
consistency of the network numbers with its confuguration (using Apple's
Interpoll utility), the hardware on our switch is solid, and we're not
exceeding any distance limitations with our network media.  We've observed
this problem on a variety of Mac hardware and a variety of MacOS versions,
in a variety of locations on our network.

Late today, we also observed the following: files with no resource fork
are *always* "doubled briefly, then the duplicate disappears, every ten or
so seconds."  Copying a resource fork from a file that does not "double"
will cause the file that used to "double" to stop "doubling."  Removing
the resource fork will cause the "doubling" to start again.  The
"doubling" phenomenon occurs even for some files with resource forks (a
non-"horns" icon, etc) but not for all; so, it is not just the "no
resource fork" files.

Does anyone know the cause and/or solution to this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Glen Shere
on behalf of the team at Institutional Technology
Ringling School of Art and Design