<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi All..<div><br></div><div>I'm looking for info to help me get to the bottom of the widely-bemoaned but apparently little-fixed CPU usage 'bug' in AppleFileServer.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm running 10.5.6 on a 2008 model 8-core Xserve which is as at this writing running at about 750% CPU with load average hovering around 100(!). As reported in many of the fora that i'm finding when googling this issue, the CPU load will be normal then something seems to trigger the AppleFileServer into creeping cpu usage. Odd thing is that, on the whole, the box remains reasonably responsive via ssh & ARD, and client connections seem to be functioning. There are usually around 50 clients connected but of course it doesn't close connections so this can sometimes creep up to over 100 until i manually go and disconnect sleeping/absent clients in Server Admin.</div><div><br></div><div>This bug (or the symptoms of) has been with us in various forms since the 10.4 days. We've hoped it'd go away with each dot-point system update but no luck so far. I note that there's a new build of AppleFileServer included in 10.5.7, but we're holding off on this update for the time being. (We'd be interested to hear of any issues with that just by the by..)</div><div><br></div><div>I've been working through some of the tests on the performance evaluation kb at <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1992">http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1992</a> but, only having vague understanding of what it all means exactly, i'm having a hard time making any sense of the numbers. There does seem to be a very high number of context switches (in the tens of thousands) in the CSW column when i run top -d and the kb article says that could be evidence of excessive pthread locking. In the output of plockstat -C there's one lock having a count of thousands, well above the total which again, the kb article says is.. bad.</div><div><br></div><div>And yet after all that.. i'm not sure it's much help to me in finding what's triggering the problem in the first place. For now i'm just restarting the AFP service from launchd in the small hours, but I'd really like to get to the bottom of the issue and I'd appreciate your thoughts & suggestions.</div><div><br></div><div>thanks,</div><div><br></div><div>..S.</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Monaco; font-size: 9px; ">----</span></div><div apple-content-edited="true"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div apple-content-edited="true"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Monaco" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">: Stewart Lawler</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Monaco" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">: Computer Systems Engineer </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Monaco" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">: Technical Resource Centre</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Monaco" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">: Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Monaco" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">: University of New South Wales </span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Monaco" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">: Phone (02) 9385 3817</span></font></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Monaco; font-size: 9px; ">: Fax (02) 9385 1340</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span> </div><br></body></html>