Hi all, I have tried just about everything I have read in this forum. Here is the problem.
We have about 15 macs in this dept. All g5’s, on 10.39 (the one machine we tested with tiger had the same issue…), between 2 and 4 gigs of ram, and the latest version of Creative Suite 2 on each one. We have had massive problems with each machine when using Photoshop CS2. When you open a tif, or PSD, or just about anything it will sit and beachball for at least 30 to 180 seconds.
In the application monitor, Photoshop shows as "Hung App" while it sits for the 30-180 seconds. This occurs on EACH machine. And has only occurred since the cs2 upgrade.
I did a sample of photoshop while it was hung on 4 different machines, and CS2 seems to be trying to open a file off of one of our local servers. It makes no sense, we are not working off of servers. Only using them to store projects. It makes no sense to have to mount and unmount servers constantly to get PS cs2 to run correctly.
Here are the samples from application monitor while the application is hung, waiting to open:
Why is photoshop cs2 hung trying to open files from our server on our entire workgroup? We have reverted back to using cs1 because it takes so darn long to do anything in cs2.
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Thank you for your reply nomad, but i specifically said in the first message that we are NOT working off of a server. We do all work on the local drive- We only use those servers to store our completed projects when we are completed with them.
Anyone else got any ideas why PS cs2 is hung on a file on our servers? When we do not work off of our servers?
First thing i checked, actually was bridge settings. I disabled version cue on each machine.
"Are you 100%, absolutely certain that Bridges preferences are set for a Centralized Cache (as opposed to distributed folders)?"
Yes, I set bridge for a centralized cache on each machine as well. You were thinking the exact same thing as I. I tried to turn off any kind of caching, but I couldn’t find a place I could do that.
"Are you 100%, absolutely certain that your users are NOT saving to the server?"
Positively. we drag the project folder to our desktop to work on it. And when I was doing these tests myself, I was using a 5 meg Tiff on the desktop, a 20 meg Tiff, and even a 500k jpeg..
"Isn’t there an OS preferences to NOT show the server? (I’m vague about this because I’m not on a network.)"
Not sure, but why would photoshops performance be linked to a mounted server? Thats what baffles me.
This topic comes up on this forum several times per year. The response is always the same: in a perfectly configured and maintained network, working across the network can work.
Since there are so many factors involved in setting up and maintaining a network, the only advice Adobe can give you is NOT to open or save files across the network.
If you do a forum search on network and Cox, you should be able to find existing threads containing this discussion. For instance:
Chris Cox, "Photoshop Networking Frustration" #5, 14 Dec 2006 10:36 pm </cgi-bin/webx?14/4>
Chris Cox, ""PSD file not compatible with this version of Photoshop"" #26, 4 Oct 2006 3:43 pm </cgi-bin/webx?14/25>
Ramon, this is entirely why I am confused- we are not working off of files on a server while in photoshop- at all… They are files on the local drive UNTIL they are completed, then they are stored in a "final corrected" server. That is the extent that a server has to do with it.
But for the life of me, those inspection samples are taken while opening a Tiff off of a local drive. When the application is hung, i go to application monitor, hit inspect, and it shows any open files that photoshop has. and its trying to open this:
First off, if I navigate to this server, these file names do not exist. the "afp_" to me tells me its an apple file protocol- I think anyway.
But, nonetheless, while I am working on nothing but a local file from my local drive, PS cs2 hangs and beachballs on this directory. Just to say it one more time, I am not working on a file stored on a server- it’s on the desktop. I seriously appreciate you communicating with me, I went back and checked all the version cue and and bridge cache settings just to make sure. We even installed a new G5 today with 10.4.8 and recreated the issue 🙁
yes exactly. For instance, I get a Tif to color correct. I Copy that tif to my desktop from the server. Do my thing in photoshop, save it as different name that indicates is was corrected to my desktop, and then copy it to our completed images server.
I never open a file while it is on a server- ever.
It is copied to the local machine first, corrected, and then copied back to the server by dragging the completed file to the appropriate server.
Awesome, thanks for letting me know it wasn’t. So back to it, that’s the bafflin’ part. Each workstation we have just beachballs with the hung ap in the activity monitor for 30 seconds plus, and those snapshots show thats the "file" PS is looking for. We have no idea what that is, nor why its slowing PS CS2. For now, we have gone back to PS CS1 on every workstation.
Ya good call on the fonts. I read about some issues with memory leaks if you have a corrupt font. We use Font reserve on each workstation, and are testing out some new font handeling apps that hopefully we can migrate to. But as for the fonts, I We tried it on 2 brand new builds, with just the default fonts on the machine. One in Tiger and one in 10.3.9. I also created new user logins on i think 5 or 6 of the machines and was able to reproduce the problem.
I don’t understand how its correlated, but I am starting to wonder if CS2 is just sensitive to network traffic. In the hung app sample, each machine is waiting on a "afp_" call, which would be apple file protocol. Thats normal, that makes sense. However, perhaps its some sort of deal with CS2 needing to "ping" mounted servers on the desktop, and for whatever reason, that server isn’t talking back.
Are there multiple instances AFP calls open at once to the same server?
But even if it is a server, or server related issue- I do not understand why CS2 is so sensitive to it, whereas we had zero problems with CS1.
Thanks for the continuing support and ideas!! In response:
Buko – It is not a Font issue. error is recreated on a brand new build with just default fonts. ——————— G ballard-
yes, if you unmount our "vol2" server. photoshop CS2 suddenly behaves.. However, this is a server that must be used in our workflow. – it works like a champ with CS1.
But I’ll ask the question one more time, why would CS2 be slow with a particular server just mounted on your dekstop?
And again, CS1 has no problem with this. ——————– DYP: We have actually gone beyond that in testing. we have tried this on three different g5’s that were reformatted, clean install of everything.
No, I have only one machine running 9.0.2. that I had updated to test. I have the same issue with that g5. Recently, we built a new one with tiger that has the same issue and is also running 9.0.2. I am going to post some screenshots for you guys here ina a few minutes.
And photoshop had never visited that folder/server? (thinking about the rencent files list) And you already stated that Bridge does not try to index the files in there…
No, photoshop should not be visiting that server at anytime on any of our workstations, in any of our workflows.
As far bridge goes, i turned off anything that remembers recent files, recent folders, made sure that it was not set up for a centralized cache. We do not use version cue, we uncheck that.
Ive relaunched photshop holding (option i think) to force it to delete write fresh preference files, reinstalled OS X with a newever version, and older version, reformatted and reinstalled, deleted fonts, removed fonts, launched with a new user, tried it from a different part of our network, argh. Im Baffled…
BTW, I have more screenshots from the other workstations, but they show the same thing. Open any image off of your desktop, with VOL2 mounted, and go make coffee.
Thanks for all the help guys, I appreciate you pickin’ your brains with me!
Ive relaunched photshop holding (option i think) to force it to delete write fresh preference files,
The correct buttons are Command+Option+Shift and you should answer yes to the prompt.
But you said that you tried on a new workstation. In the past, I remember machines scanning the network for licences conflicts… But it’s been a while that I’ve not seen that.
We have the same issue at my work where about 10 retouchers are working in Photoshop CS2 with a network volume containing 1,3 TB of .psd files are residing. Just to have this mounted can cause long lasting "beach balls" when opening a file even if the file resides locally on the machine.
All machines are running Mac OS X 10.4.8.
As you can see in my post the file that has got to do with the slowdown is called com.adobe.mediabrowser.plist and if this is removed the slowdown goes away, but only for some time.
I’ve called Adobe tech. support and they suggested trying to make the file non accessible get info and under Ownership & Permissions "You can" change to "No Access".
While this did sound like a good thing to try it didn’t help for us.
Anyway, I think you should stop wasting time with troubleshooting other things when this is obviously a problem with Photoshop CS2.
I suggest making a simple AppleScript that the users can have in the Dock and run it to delete the "com.adobe.mediabrowser.plist" file when things get slow. It seems it’s ok to delete it while Photoshop is running.
If the suggestion above didn’t solve it the Adobe tech guys referred me to the Adobe forums… -.-
I guess we can only hope that Photoshop CS3 doesn’t behave the same way.
You should give a check to your server settings (the one the volumes are mounted from), network status and equipment (swich).
To be sure some of our product (say an installer for a multimedia CD) are not inavertedly linked on server files we sometimes pull the network cable. We realised that clicking on a mounted network folder (that was not dismounted first), there is then a long freeze (there is a timout option that the system is using for it’s reconnect attempts i think, but i havent inspected this further).
Maybe your network connection is dropping??
But sure, it doesnt explain why photoshop try to access those volumes (probably some idle check of mounted volumes)??
We are using CS2 with Windows and OSX mounted volumes and all (well almost!) is working fine.
The network seems fine here. You can copy big files from the the servers with good speed and sustained transfer rates.
I tried now and it takes about 8 seconds transfer rate to copy 281,7 MB .psd file from the network volume all the retouchers have mounted.
I think it has more to to with the fact that the volume contains about 1,3 TB of .psd files and often Photoshop want to "touch" all of them before opening another file. 🙂
That it also helps to remove the "com.adobe.mediabrowser.plist" make me feel it has got little to do with the network setup.
At the same time the problems seem to come and go for the users (though it’s always someone who has the slowdowns). This could maybe point to a network issue, but everything else seems quite fast so I still doubt it.
Eric, the net admins team has found no faults within our network. I can ask the server admins to look at it again, but as Martin had posted, and as far as im concerned, that this is an photoshop cs2 problem. I am further reluctant to ask those guys to break down servers ESPECIALLY when CS1 works fine. We still use the rest of the CS suite, but as of now just not PS cs2.
I think a more likely explination could be with how often OS X pings servers that are mounted, and CS2 is being held up waiting for a afp call to be fullfilled. But I do not think its going to be anything I can fix. Adobe needs to fix it.
CS 1 again, has zero issues with having servers mounted.
At this point, like Martin had posted, I think removing or just not using photshop cs2 is the easiest solution at this point. I hope that Adobe fixes this issue in the near future.
Martin, we also tried an applescript that cleaned that particualar .plist with the same results you had. I had not thought to try and make it read only. It worked like a champ for all of one image, and then it just went back to Beachballing. So if you ever come accross a solution, let me know. But I have a feeling it will be CS3.
I have exactly the same problem on a home network where the mounted volume is from a MacMini. I have the same problem with the CS3 beta so don’t hold your hopes on that. I just move the files I am going to work on, trash the network connection, do the work in CS2, re-connect to the network and move the files back. Ugh!
I was really hoping that there would be an answer here but I guess not. What is telling is that Adobe seems to have little interest in figuring out what this bug is.
Ramon, no we dont use I disk. We use enterprise level servers for file storage.
Larry, no the scratch disk is the local drive.
Dan, thanks for posting. Maybe more will be inspired to post on this thread with the same issue. Although I am quite disturbed that you are recreating the same issue with CS3 🙁 Great.
Another question I believe I have not asked: Have you tried Purging the Bridge cache? How about physically removing all the files in the Camera Raw Cache folder by brute force?
we do not allow iDisks to be mounted to any of the imaging macs.
Good practice.
why just the camera raw folder? I would nuke anything after /caches…
The Camera Raw cache grows darn fast and it’s on a different folder from other caches, not the Adobe folder. Let’s just say I was too lazy to type other paths. 😉
I did two things and I am no longer having the network problem: Deleted ‘com.adobe.mediabrowser.plist’ and ‘~/Library/Caches/Adobe Camera Raw’. This is with CS3 so it may not be applicable to CS2 and it may have been something that CS2 did, such as a file or file contents, that CS3 chokes on but does not re-create.
Note that I do not see a setting for Centralized Cache (as opposed to distributed folders) in CS3 and I did have bridge cache files on a network volume (I did not have to remove them to fix the network problem).
As a bonus I can open files on a network volume fine now!
I have to vote that Bridge is the culprit in some manner, perhaps an interaction with Photoshop by files it creates.
This may not help, but you can get a simalar problem with computers and the net (PS hanging like a dog untill you pull the network cable out of the wall) because PS is looking for the correct driver for your printer.
No, I don’t know WHY, but if PS thinks your printer has the wrong driver and is connected to the web, it will GO LOOK FOR IT. Which is stupid, because it doesn’t DOWNLOAD it or anything useful. It just goes looking.
Try setting your default printer to a ‘virtual’ printer, like a PDF maker or something. Then restart and see if PS hangs.
Might not help, but it has fixed some issues with my version.
"PS is looking for the correct driver for your printer. "
I seriouly doubt that Photoshop has this ability!
It might try to reconnect to the old adress of your printer. Have you tried to totally uninstall the printer, then reinstall (with the lastest drivers, while you are at it)?
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