ChangeDesktop Crashes with NFS home
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#34 ChangeDesktop Crashes with NFS home
OS: 10.3.x (reproduced in 10.3.4-10.3.8)
Hardware: G5/1.6
ChangeDesktop seems to crash after sleep with an NFS
Pictures directory. My system has home mounted via
NFS. ChangeDesktop normally runs fine but after sleep
I usually find the server hung up.
After sleep ChangeDesktop will list 0 pictures
available. It still is running - I can see
ChangeDesktop if I use ps. However it appears to have
lost contact with the NFS-mounted pictures folder and
does not attempt to reconnect. I have confirmed that
the directory is in fact available through the
Finder/Terminal. This is an automounted NFS folder.
If I copy the same set of pictures to a local drive I
do not see this problem. I suspect ChangeDesktop is
trying to do something post-sleep that happens before
the NFS connection is re-established although I would
expect it to 'find' the pictures once the NFS directory
becomes available again (a few seconds after wake).
It does not appear to matter if the "Change pictures on
wake" option is selected or not - I initially thought
this might be causing trouble since ChangeDesktop would
be attempting to change the picture right away on wake.
Logged In: YES
user_id=595265
Your diagnosis is pretty much straight on. I would guess that CD is trying to
change the picture on wake (if you have a timer set it's likely to do this even if
"Change on Wake" is off). As part of the pic selection, CD checks the timestamps
on managed folders to see if these changed. I'm guessing that CD is getting to
the underlying mount folder before the NFS volume is re-mounted. It sees the
timestamp is different and so re-scans the now empty folder -- hence the 0 count.
As for CD recognizing when the NFS volume is mounted, it will not do that. It only
manages folders and doesn't care/know if that folder is actually a volume. The
only time it will re-scan managed folders is when a pic change occurs. So, in order
to get your NFS drive re-scanned, you will have to force a pic change from the
system-wide menu or from the CD GUI.
Logged In: YES
user_id=1238545
Unfortunately even manually attempting to force a picture
change doesn't work, only stopping and restarting the server
seems to restore normal operation. Of course that takes it
right back to the very first picture in the list of
sequential pics so I never end up seeing half the pictures I
have available
Logged In: YES
user_id=1238545
Thinking futher... In this particular case the pictures
folder is a subfolder of the NFS shared volume - this would
cause CD to believe the directory in question did not exist
at all as opposed to seeing the directory as empty.
What does CD do if it finds a pictures directory to be
missing all together? It appears as though it ignores that
directory until the server is restarted.
Logged In: YES
user_id=595265
Okay, that's the problem then. If CD gets an error trying to stat() the folder it will
remove the folder from its internal list. So a missing folder would cause the exact
behavior you are seeing. I'll have to look into this some more.