Re: Word looks for another server on the network

Elliot Roper:

Thanks for your response on this thread:

in article 091220061250215720%nospam@xxxxxxxxx, Elliott Roper at
nospam@xxxxxxxxx wrote on 12/9/06 4:50 AM:

In article <1165631003.614302.48260@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<rwargo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've experienced a similar problem which was the result of an alias to
an offline folder; specifically, it was the Pictures folder that I had
aliased to a network folder. Removing the alias or renaming the
Pictures alias removed the AFP Connection Status dialog. I've blogged
about this problem and solution on my blog (http://www.rickwargo.com).
The entry is at:


http://www.rickwargo.com/2006/12/08/afp-connection-status-and-various-os-x-ap>>
p
lications-locking-up/

Yes!! That's what happened to me too. Alias problems.
Its something that goes back to OS9. I had a fax application in that
state for ages till I found the file that was really an alias. It was
on a recently used list or something else innocuous.

I've posted a response to Rick Wango, asking for some details. It's
possible his experience and mine are the same... or not.

It might be worth Henry's time to potter about in the Finder looking
for little curvy arrows on the icons of files that Word might be
interested in.

That's the first thing I did. And the second, and the third.

If Word is interested in obtaining a resource, the identity of the resource
ought to be in evidence, somehow, somewhere. Without a treasure hunt by
the user, who --after all-- is presumably interested in doing some writing.

Here's a good place: In the dialog that comes up after the request fails.
May I suggest some text? "Word can't continue without being able to find
<resource>. Make this available and choose 'continue' or click 'exit' to
leave Word.

"Force Quit" was the only alternative. Doing that risks damage to whatever
Word might have in-process at the time -- hopefully nothing just after
launching, but one never knows.

Henry, I agree with your assertion that it shouldn't happen, but it is
probably out of Microsoft's hands to a large degree.

Thanks!

When Word asks OS X to do something with a file, it has to wait politely till
it is done. Remember OS X is a flavour of BSD unix, where I/O operations are
depressingly uniformly synchronous [1].

I'll address this further below.

If you ask for something, your
thread is dead till it happens. Of course Word's designers could have
developed a complex multithreaded jacket around file operations, and
added their own timeouts, but honestly, it would have been a nightmare
that would break on every second OS revision. There are many things on
my wish list for Word, but *that* is not one of them.

Word is clearly stuck at a point at which it wants a resource that is not
available. That is a perfectly valid point to block. And it is exactly
right that Word needs to leave such details to the operating system.

The alias could be simply to a file of your own that is in some
recently used list or list of templates or even a font. I wouldn't get
too hung up on ~/Pictures or ~/Library just yet.

So we have suspicions about what Word did NOT want... Any more clues about
where one might look to find what it did want?

There is one thing that might be in Word's backyard. That is the
looping behaviour you see. It would be very useful if you could make a
simple demonstration of this that others could replicate. The MVPs
among us will send it on to the developers to examine. (Or you could
use the send feedback menu item)

Certainly, I would, if the behavior had continued. As I posted some days
ago, I was in the process of clearing the decks to examine the issue from
several angles --including, thank you very much for reminding me, lsof-- and
the behavior simply vanished. I did not delete any aliases, as far as I
know. The behavior had already survived a system shutdown and quite a few
standard Word problem-solving techniques Closing irrelevant applications
should have had no effect. But... that's what happened.

Since the problem has disappeared, this might seem academic, but it seems
that similar issues have come up before, and it seems worthwhile to figure
out other places one might look to figure out what Word is seeking in these
kinds of situations.


1. I'm being unkind to unix possibly. Even my beloved VMS, with all its
lovely QIOs and ASTs, is pretty synchronous across a file lookup.
Finding a file is actually quite an intricate operation, involving lots
of separate I/O operations, and often a delicate dance with locks and
mutexes, which in turn bring on timers with retries and lots of process
switching inside the OS. Aliases make it far worse, not least when the
physical file, or another in the chain of aliases is on a different
volume.

How any OS satisfies an application request for a file --or any other system
resource-- is entirely independent of the application. How an application
deals with the non-availability of the requested resource is entirely the
responsibility of the application. That's fundamental to the distinction
between "application" and "operating system". As far as I can determine,
the OS did exactly what it should -- it tried to get something requested by
Word. When the item was unavailable, the OS reported to the user what
happened and, reported the status back to Word, which blindly repeated the
request without offering any reasonable alternatives to the user.

Thanks,

Henry


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