Finder freezes when deleting files across a network

finderhangNetworkterminalunix

I have my MacBook 5,2 hooked up to an Ubuntu 10.10 'server' via ethernet.

I've installed netatalk (AFP fileserver) and avahi-daemon (Bonjour for Linux) on the server. I've disallowed Spotlight from indexing the networked drives.

Everything works as it should, however, from time to time when I delete files that reside on the Ubuntu server from my MacBook, Finder will freeze. I can kill the Finder process. I then try to restart it from the Terminal in this way:

open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

but this doesn't work. The following error message is printed in the Terminal:

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app.

The only solution I know of at present is to reboot the MacBook.

So I guess I need to know what my options are here. Is it better for me to use SMB? Or is there a config file I can alter? I have a feeling this bug may be linked to certain disallowed characters in file or pathnames.

Has anyone else experienced this bug?

Cheers.

Best Answer

What version of Mac OS X are you running? If you're not on a relatively current Snow Leopard (10.6.x) consider upgrading.

Relevant log files may be found on your Mac OS X client in the /var/log directory. These three may (or may not) contain relevant information (depending on what's actually happening):

  • system.log
  • kernel.log
  • secure.log

Consider also looking in the logs on your server, which may give you additional information.

You can restart the Finder (short of rebooting) in a few ways.
(1) log out, and log back in; or,

(2) restart the Finder in the GUI;

  • open the "Force Quit Applications" monitor window
  • select "Finder" in the list of running applications
  • click "Force Quit"
  • Finder will automatically respawn unless hypothetically something dreadfully broken on your system prevents that, in which case I imagine a reboot might be required (I've never seen that happen)

(3) Restart the Finder in a Terminal shell; The command you describe would be expected to work, but it looks like the open command on your system is guessing wrong about the nature of the Finder.app path that you gave it. Consider launching Disk Utility and running the Repair Permissions.

Note, however, that the Finder should respawn automatically once it's been killed. The simplest way to restart it in a shell is to:

$ killall Finder
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