kamanderside Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 Running Mac OS Big Sur 11.4 I've encountered this issue suddenly in the last 4-6 weeks. Clearing defaults seemed to only work temporarily, it extended the time I was seeing the issue by a week or so. Saving to disk is fine it seems, but saving to our local server is when it happens. I haven't used Publisher as frequently lately so not sure if the issue extends to it. What happens: - save file - save hangs a little over halfway through the loading bar - saved file is corrupted - have to force-quit program - program won't start again - Finder-related things are janky or crash while the program is in this state. - have to shut computer down - Computer won't shut down bc somehow the program is still running in the background, though it doesn't appear in the Activity Monitor, hangs with desktop bg visible but everything else gone. - Hard shut-down via power button - reboot - everything's fine again for an unspecified amount of time, thankfully the program's had a recovered version of the file each time. Oh yeah, and it doesn't generate a crash report. I've gone back and forth with our IT guy, he's certain the server itself isn't causing it, there weren't any recorded events during those times. I still suspect it to some degree, as it's a Windows-based server and I'm the only Mac-user saving to it regularly, and the save issue seems to happen at random (I don't have an event to tie it to on my end), but that could just be bias. I don't have any other programs that I save directly to the server with, so hard to check if it's only Affinity Photo/Designer doing it. I'm going to start playing with the most recent Photo Beta, just to see if it keeps happening there. In the meantime, let me know whatever I can provide to help with this... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted July 19, 2021 Staff Share Posted July 19, 2021 Hi @warzmanda, My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here and we're very sorry to hear you're having trouble! On 7/13/2021 at 10:51 PM, warzmanda said: Saving to disk is fine it seems, but saving to our local server is when it happens. I haven't used Publisher as frequently lately so not sure if the issue extends to it. I can confirm that our developers recommend always saving to a local device, and then transferring the saved files to the server for backup/storage due to how our app saves files. We don't recommend working directly from a server location - which may be causing the issues you're seeing currently. However, I'd like to request more information regarding the server to ensure there are no bugs with the application here. Can you please confirm for me: Are you using an 'SMB' file share? Does the server disconnect after a while when not being used? How are you connecting to the remote share on macOS? Many thanks in advance Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamanderside Posted July 19, 2021 Author Share Posted July 19, 2021 The server address is in this format - smb://192.168.100.### - with no other characters, and withheld the last numbers for security reasons, even though I know it shouldn't be an issue, but still. There's usually a notification if the server disconnects. I haven't had it disconnect after not being used for a bit that I can remember. On that topic I noticed a seemingly random moment where I was browsing the server and it booted me back to the root folder for permissions reasons, but didn't actually disconnect. Talked to the IT guy and he seems to think it was related to our security software, so he decided to whitelist the affinity file extensions (.afphoto, etc) in the security software to see if that would help. The hypothesis is that the software was being overly thorough and when it checks a file it's "in use", so it's possible that trying to save over the version that was being checked was crashing Affinity and Finder. Other people with different programs have been having this issue with the security software on occasion, apparently, but they're all on Windows so it's possible the problem was presenting differently. Connection on MacOS - it's just the server address at the top of this post typed into the "connect to server" dialogue. There is a shortcut set up on the desktop to connect it quicker. - Connection Physically: I'm connecting on-site via ethernet cable plugged into the wall, which is a direct connection to the server. Granted my office phone is acts like relay between that connection from the mac to the wall, as there is only one ethernet jack at my desk and both devices need it. IT guy said it could be a problem, but it's unlikely. I am also using the 10.0 beta now to see if it's a version issue as well, but given the IT guy made some changes on his end, I should go back to using 1.9.3 for a bit to see if that fixed it. --- Working from the server wasn't causing issues up until the last month, which again, IT guy posits that maybe an update to the security software running on the server itself started flagging .af_ files. I certainly see the value in saving directly to disk, but my boss and IT want everything on the server so everyone's using the same version of files. Old Bruce 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted July 22, 2021 Staff Share Posted July 22, 2021 Many thanks for the information provided here, this is very helpful! On 7/19/2021 at 4:37 PM, warzmanda said: Talked to the IT guy and he seems to think it was related to our security software, so he decided to whitelist the affinity file extensions (.afphoto, etc) in the security software to see if that would help. The hypothesis is that the software was being overly thorough and when it checks a file it's "in use", so it's possible that trying to save over the version that was being checked was crashing Affinity and Finder. This certainly sounds like a potential cause of the issue you're seeing and I hope the change in security sensitive helps here, please do keep us updated. Should you continue to have issues with the Affinity app hanging, please do let me know and we can look to create a Console log which will hopefully have some more in-deth technical info for our devs to investigate kamanderside 1 Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamanderside Posted July 26, 2021 Author Share Posted July 26, 2021 On 7/22/2021 at 9:47 AM, Dan C said: Many thanks for the information provided here, this is very helpful! This certainly sounds like a potential cause of the issue you're seeing and I hope the change in security sensitive helps here, please do keep us updated. Should you continue to have issues with the Affinity app hanging, please do let me know and we can look to create a Console log which will hopefully have some more in-deth technical info for our devs to investigate So far things seem nominal, but I haven't had an opportunity to do a big batch of images all at once yet. Will update again after I get such a batch. Dan C 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamanderside Posted August 5, 2021 Author Share Posted August 5, 2021 I think it's safe to say this one is solved. Been working/saving in Designer all morning (the other program that was having issues saving to the server) and not one save hang to speak of. TL;DR It seems the issue was the security software on the Windows Server was getting overly concerned with the Affinity file extensions (.afphoto, .afdesign, .afpub) from the repetitive save actions through working on the file. Security software kept scanning them, leading to Affinity being unable to save over the old file version, as it was in use by said security software. It crashed not only the open Affinity program but also Finder and necessitated a hard shutdown every time it happened. Solution was to whitelist Affinity file extensions in the security software. Leigh and Dan C 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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