Networking issues with Tiger and Snow Leopard

One of my clients has eight FCP rooms in two cities that are connected via a high speed network. These machines are older, mostly G5 dual processor units. All are running OSX 10.4 and have been happy and stable for about five years.

In addition seven newer computers have been added to the network, and these shipped with Snow Leopard and three have FCS (3).

We have been having issues sharing files between the two OS's. Speed issues and permissions getting mucked up.

Rather than detail here and bore the pants of folks who don't share this type of configuration, I would love to know if anyone else has a network that contains both Tiger and Snow Leopard machines, and if they see any weirdness in their file sharing operations?

Thanks
-Vance

Quote

I would love to know if anyone else has a network that contains both Tiger and Snow Leopard machines

Yes.

Quote

and if they see any weirdness in their file sharing operations?

No.

No offense meant, Vance, but you're gonna have to share a lot more if you want help.

No offense taken Jeff. I am just on a fishing expedition to see if anyone else even has this odd combo. If you don't mind I will PM you with more specifics. Not because it is a big secret, but rather to avoid clogging the public board with what for most will be arcane.

-V

Please clog up the public board. That's what it's for.

Fair enough

Here is a bit more. The way this client works, all the editors and operators use the same login. With the Tiger machines they have for years been able to push and pull files between the edit stations across a gig E network dedicated to that purpose. Some of the stations are at one location, others in a second facility about 50 miles away. There is a high speed fiber system that connects the locations and carries a number of services including video and data.

Now, with the addition of the new machines, there have been some permission issues. If a 10.6 machine creates a folder on a 10.4 machine the permissions, as viewed from the 10.6 machine appear as read only. Both OS's seems able to read and write to the folder. Keep in mind all machines are sharing a log-in. Should the 10.6 machine modify the permissions the folder becomes completely locked from 10.6 and it must be corrected from 10.4. These issues appears with files as well as folders.

Another symptom that I have been told about has to do with the speed of file transfer between the OS's. Should a 10.4 machine initiate a transfer it runs at the expected speed. Should the 10.6 machine start the transfer it runs much reduced data rate.

The client has an engineer who is the IT guru, and he and the chief engineer have been working on this issue. I know that web research has yielded very little information. They did find that Apple made changes to how they deal with permissions in either 10.5 or 10.6.

I am hoping to make contact with someone else who might have seen these problems so that I can pass the contact to them.

-V

Quote

Now, with the addition of the new machines, there have been some permission issues. If a 10.6 machine creates a folder on a 10.4 machine the permissions, as viewed from the 10.6 machine appear as read only. Both OS's seems able to read and write to the folder. Keep in mind all machines are sharing a log-in. Should the 10.6 machine modify the permissions the folder becomes completely locked from 10.6 and it must be corrected from 10.4. These issues appears with files as well as folders.

This has been a problem with us since we upgraded all our client machines to leopard. My boss did some research and its due a change within the OS. We haven't come up with an elegant solution, so if someone has one we'd love to hear it too. Our network is based around an xsan system, but it happens when we create folder machine to machine also.

As far as speed no problems here.

Thanks Vince. If my client's engineers find something, I'll report back here.

-V

I was able to set up a test in my office this afternoon. Using two machines, one running Tiger and one running Snow Leopard I was able to verify the problem. It seems that the get info utility in SN can not properly read the permissions of a Tiger file or folder. Even tho the file on the 10.4 machine has the correct permissions, SL's get info sees them as read only for "everyone". If you change permissions from SL it changes all permissions to no access for anyone; owner, group and other. You then have to correct the problem with a third party utility or the chmod command in the terminal.

I don't yet know why, or what the fix is, but now I at least understand the problem.

-Vance

Perhaps you should report this to Apple:
[bugreport.apple.com] (requires a free developer account)

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

Vance,

This issue (and related ones) has been known since Leopard came out. So, it isn't new to Snow Leopard (though some parts of the issue may be SL specific).

As you discovered, the Finder is not capable of properly setting permissions for mounted volumes. You would have to use the Terminal or other tools.

It's too bad they didn't test things prior to installing the new Mac Pros. The "engineers" at your client company made a mistake. Part of this is understandable, considering their use of single-user account setups.
;-)

My solution, with the advice of a networking consulting friend, was to upgrade my older Macs to Leopard (as they were PPC-based). Prior to that, I moved files around from the Tiger OS Macs side of things, or hosted files on drives connected to the Leopard (or SL) based Macs (so the Leopard/SL Macs didn't use volumes from the Tiger Macs).

Replacing the remaining older Macs, so that all computers are running Snow Leopard, would also fix things. Since the lastest (2009) Mac Pros were released before Snow Leopard came out, you should be able to downgrade the Mac Pros to Leopard and upgrade the G5s to Leopard.

If you need to make things work, as is, there are many things to check into. This issue is easier to workaround if you were using Tiger Servers rather than clients, though not something an end-user could typically do. I can't remember all that was involved, but I do remember that you would need to set up ACLs; check for proper UIDs and GIDs; and other tricky network and UNIXy stuff...

A good, Mac OS X knowledgeable network engineer should be able to get things sorted out. Good luck!


-Dave

I have spent a few hours this evening looking over the support boards at Apple's site. There seems to be a lot of issues that are similar to what I am seeing. As my issues are seem to be one small aspect of a larger problem I think, Jon, I will hold off reporting to Apple.

Dave, unfortunately because of the way corporate purchasing cycles go, we may live with this for a year or so until a full round of upgrades can be done. It is possible that they might upgraded the PPC's to 10.5. Hosting on a server is a non starter. At the moment all users have local storage for their projects. The sharing is client to client. There are also a couple of servers and sharepoints involved, and they are another problem.


Thanks for the tips.

-Vance

VPiccin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dave, unfortunately because of the way corporate
> purchasing cycles go, we may live with this for a
> year or so until a full round of upgrades can be
> done. It is possible that they might upgraded the
> PPC's to 10.5. Hosting on a server is a non
> starter. At the moment all users have local
> storage for their projects. The sharing is client
> to client. There are also a couple of servers and
> sharepoints involved, and they are another
> problem.

Yeah, I guess if they could have replaced all of the G5s they would have.
;-)

Another friend of mine, who is an Apple consultant, mentioned that clients running older versions of OS X usually can connect (read/write) to Macs running newer versions with few, if any, problems, but not vice versa (as you mentioned).

He also mentioned having used SharePoints to set up Tiger-based Macs, so that Tiger volumes could be accessed from Leopard and Snow Leopard clients.

A good thing about upgrading to Leopard (10.5) is that the G5s should actually run more efficiently. Finding copies of 10.5 may be the hardest part.

Hope things work out...


-Dave

Dave-

The sharepoints software looks interesting. Thanks.

-Vance

Vance,

I heard from another person about the performance part of your issue.

He suggested that you run some tests with the IPv6 settings off on the Snow Leopard machines (versus the default "on" and see if that makes a difference.

So, in the Network system preference, you would click the Advanced button and then set the "Configure IPv6" pop-up menu to "Off." Then, reboot all systems, switches, routers, etc., before testing.

This suggested workaround is supposed to mitigate the differences in implementation of IPv6 between 10.4 and 10.6...


-Dave

P.S. - Of course, if you are specifically using IPv6 features, which most people aren't, then this probably wouldn't be an option. Also, I would appreciate hearing about your success or failure with this potential fix, so that I can report back to my friend. Thanks.

Thanks Dave, I'll pass it along.

Until we update or replace all the machines we think we will be able to work around the problems. It seems that the big thing is that when post 10.5 machines look at 10.4 files, the ONLY see the permissions assigned to everyone. So even if you are the owner of the file, it is locked unless "everyone" permissions are available.

This little utility WILL see the permissions correctly and let you change them on a remote machine that is running Tiger. If you are in this situation, give it a try.


[www.gideonsoftworks.com]

VPiccin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks Dave, I'll pass it along.
>
> Until we update or replace all the machines we
> think we will be able to work around the problems.
> It seems that the big thing is that when post 10.5
> machines look at 10.4 files, the ONLY see the
> permissions assigned to everyone. So even if you
> are the owner of the file, it is locked unless
> "everyone" permissions are available.

Yeah, that's what seems to be happening, at least for the permissions part of the issue. Sharepoints can help with that, as well (to change ACLs and permissions).

Since there is only one user account (other than an admin account?), setting permssions for "everyone" may be the simplest workaround.

I also know that if "the user" account has admin privileges, you may have better access on 10.4 machines from 10.5/10.6 machines...


> This little utility WILL see the permissions
> correctly and let you change them on a remote
> machine that is running Tiger. If you are in this
> situation, give it a try.
>
>
> [www.gideonsoftworks.com]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have a license for Super Get Info (Bare Bones Software), which doesn't much of the same.

I hope the IPv6 "trick" helps, as well.


-Dave