Command F (find
 

Ok this issue I have with searching for files on OSX is baffling..
I hope to explain the problem properly.
All our files are stored on Window 2000 server harddrive that in OS9 and below if I was searching for ie ' XU458798' on this hardrive the results will be almost instaneous, however when I do command F (find) in OSX for that same file the results takes forever.

Even if I try to Query the search instaed of Find still takes way longer than it does in OS9.

I have done specific places in OSX, and by selection through the Query and the results are the same.. too long.

I thought ( hoped) upgrading to Panther would have improved this feature.

My question is why?.. I mean both OSes are searching the same harddrive why would a newer OS perform slower than an older OS in this regard.

thanks

When you search, are you targeting only the mounted drive or are you targeting "everywhere"?

just the drive we need to search..
 

like I mentioned we use specific places through the Find or selection through Query.. still VERY SLOW in comparsion to OS9.

In another thread, you mentioned that you have some machines running 10.3.1. You should try the search on that machine and see if you get better speed. There have been some complaints about 10.3.2 and SMB networking being very slow.

oh lovely :(
 

We tried with the stcok CD before the applying the software update no big difference.

Is this problem because of Apple's codeing or vice versa?

networking problem
 

As I understand it, you are having a problem with slow file searches of networked drives with Panther.
You have been talking about searching the "hard drive" but really the relevant thing here is the networking.

The slowness you are seeing is due to a problem with networking between your Mac and the Windows server. I think you will discover that is not specifically anything to do with "Find" - it is merely that you have a slow (because of misconfiguration or hardware problems) network connection to the server.

There have been several forum threads in the past about slow networking and you should search for these and read what other people have done to fix the problem. As I said above, the networking problem might be due to misconfiguration (e.g. mismatch between your Mac's ethernet speed settings and those of the router that connects you to the Windows server, or it might be a hardware problem (a bad Ethernet cable or a bad plug where your cable gets plugged into the router, etc). Sometimes these problems will afffect OS X networking more than OS 9 - this could explain why you didn't have a problem with OS 9.

[edit]I looked back and saw that you have had this problem for a while and have written here about it before. You should be sure to check again that you don't have left-over detritus (unwanted folders from previous mounts) in the /Volumes folder as I explained in this previous thread:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...threadid=14232
Some people have found that having these extaneous folders under /Volumes does slow things down for some reason. And to avoid getting these extraneous folders, make sure that you unmount the networked volumes from your Mac before disconnecting your Mac from the network.

Would it help for them to also index the volume? Might take overnight, but the search will be faster. By all means, fix the network connection, but this may help in the mean time, would it not?

Will I did do more tests...
 

But based on the test from Miranda site, things seem ok, however I am having our IT person look into it furthur.

Curious though the test to find through terminal is the same as if I were to find through 'Query or Command F' , if I direct the location of where the file maybe (reduce the subfolder search) and make it more specific. It finds the file quickly. But this defeats the purpose of finding anything, we don't always know where the files are?

Another test I made (that was suggested before) was to create a file and place it on some of our local mac drives.

I did three drives two on different zone and one that uses system 9.. the results were fast.

So my question/theories are:

1)did the results come back quickly because the local drives are not as heavy with files?

2)was it because I search our local drive rather the server?

3) or both, which again defeats the purpose of having a server in the first place?

4) Because OSX is more UNIX based, is it doing something in it's search that OS9 doesn't even recognize?

Hope these question aren't stupid
I'm not much of a programmer so when things go weird it's hard to troubleshoot when I don't know what to look for.

I used to deleting a file or clean install (from OS9 days) and moving on..

Live and Learn.

The computer's bus and hard drive's bus speeds are (at least) 10s of times faster then your networking, even if your networking was running at peak efficiency. Therefore, searching locally won't give you a good metric against searching a mounted/network drive. The 2 just don't match up.

You still don't seem to have looked at the possibility of extraneous junk in the /Volumes folder.

Please open a Terminal window and run the following command and copy & paste the results back here so we can see:

ls -l /Volumes

(It is probably best if you copy and paste the above command rather than typing it in)

OK... but
 

have another set back...

for some odd reason I can not log back on to our server.
Once I do I will do the test and post back.


thanks

NEWS
 

Still can't connect properly BUT our IT person is here and I found our server that we use is being shared with Microsoft Exchange, it will be removed by Friday.

So hopefully on Monday the speed factor will be somewhat resolved.

Hayne terminal test
 

I hope this was done correctly..

this test was done on another unit running the same OSX and a G4 with similar specs but the same problem.


[THE-CAT:~] thecat% ls -l /Volumes/VOL2
total 48
drwxr-xr-x 77 thecat unknown 2574 16 Dec 13:45 --TO BE TRASHED--
drwx------ 9 thecat unknown 264 17 Oct 15:23 1 ??? AD SPEC ARTS
drwx------ 13 thecat unknown 398 5 Jan 13:35 2 ??? SOUVENIR ARTS
drwx------ 8 thecat unknown 264 14 Jan 14:26 3 ??? STOCK
drwx------ 4 thecat unknown 264 18 Feb 08:16 4 ??? EMAILS
drwx------ 13 thecat unknown 398 6 Jan 08:40 5 ??? IN HOUSE JOBS
drwx------ 28 thecat unknown 908 17 Jun 2003 6 ??? LOGOS & USEFUL ARTS
drwx------ 15 thecat unknown 466 17 Feb 16:21 7 ??? TEMP
drwx------ 23 thecat unknown 738 26 Jan 11:32 8 ??? REQUISITIONS & TEMPLATES
drwx------ 20 thecat unknown 636 6 Feb 13:48 9 ??? MATT FOLDER
drwx------ 32 thecat unknown 1044 5 Feb 15:35 04 ??? SCANS
drwx------ 9 thecat unknown 264 3 Feb 08:58 10 ??? FONT INVENTORY
drwx------ 25 thecat unknown 806 14 Nov 10:04 11 ??? SOFTWARE UPDATING...
drwx------ 7 thecat unknown 264 10 Sep 15:26 12 ??? GOOD COMPLETE FONT PILE
drwx------ 7 thecat unknown 264 13 Jun 2003 Avanti
drwxrwxrwx 2 thecat unknown 264 29 Jan 2003 Cleanup At Startup
-rwx------ 1 thecat unknown 1090 12 Feb 12:27 Folder refresh.scpt
drwxrwxrwx 7 thecat unknown 264 18 Feb 08:25 Network Trash Folder
drwx------ 5 thecat unknown 264 19 Dec 16:32 SOUVENIR AVANTI CATALOGS
drwx------ 16 thecat unknown 500 20 Dec 2001 System Folder
drwx------ 4 thecat unknown 264 17 Feb 17:01 Temporary Items
drwx------ 2 thecat unknown 264 30 Oct 2002 TheFindByContentFolder
drwx------ 3 thecat unknown 264 27 Mar 2003 TheVolumeSettingsFolder
drwx------ 2 thecat unknown 264 5 Mar 2003 Trash
drwx------ 3 thecat unknown 264 27 Nov 19:10 emails
-rwx------ 1 thecat unknown 101 16 Feb 10:27 hosts
-rwx------ 1 thecat unknown 1170 11 Feb 12:56 refreshdesktop.scpt
[THE-CAT:~] thecat%

If you look back at my posting, you will see that I had asked you to show us the results of the command:
ls -l /Volumes
(not /Volumes/VOL2)
So maybe you want to try again, showing us the results of the above command.

But I note that you seem to have some strange names for your folders on that VOL2 volume - what are all those question marks? While it is unlikely that these strange names are causing the problem, it is a possibility and so I would try renaming the folders to use only ASCII characters. Or maybe try running your speed tests on a volume where there is no such naming issue to see if it is a problem.

I'm guessing that the directories with the ??? preceeding the names are bullets (•)?

yes...
 

there are for example:

1 • Ad Spec

So, are you planning to try the suggestions I made in my last post?

Hayne I did ...
 

it's several posts up,

also here is a search I did through the finder. The trail is as follows..

POWERPUFF-private-var-automount-network-upstairs-artcom-vol2-1 • ad spec-i50-527 folder- the searched file.

It's this a long way to go to find a file, and this is after I narrowed down the search through alaises.


I don't know how I can attach a screen shot to visual show you.

Re: Hayne I did ...
 

The post I was referring to was the one that will now be my third-last post - the one from 02-18-2004 11:25 AM.
Please re-read that post and respond.

ok sorry didn't see that post
 

Last login: Fri Feb 20 09:22:36 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
[Marge:~] marge% ls -l /Volumes
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 42 marge unknown 1384 19 Feb 17:04 KELLY
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 16 Feb 08:55 MARGE -> /
drwxr-xr-x 45 marge unknown 1486 19 Feb 16:10 POWERPUFF
drwx------ 31 marge unknown 1010 18 Feb 09:57 Vol2
drwx------ 15 marge unknown 466 18 Feb 09:57 vol1
[Marge:~] marge%

Okay, I don't see any extraneous (leftover) junk in that /Volumes listing.

You should do a quantitative test to see if the problem is related to Finder's search or to networking. One way to do this would be to time how long it takes to find a specific file by using the 'find' command in a Terminal window and compare that to the time for the Find in Finder. Try these tests several times, alternating between the Terminal and Finder methods. Report the average time for each method.

I think you know how to do the 'find' in Terminal from instructions in a previous thread by here it is again.
Suppose the file is called "myfile.txt" and is in the folder "mystuff/myfolder" on the drive "mydrive" that is mounted under /Volumes. You could search for this file using 'find' in Terminal by running the following command:

find /Volumes/mydrive -name myfile.txt

That would start the search at the top level of the "mydrive" volume. It should print out the result as:
/Volumes/mydrive/mystuff/myfolder/myfile.txt

Do the same search in Finder by telling it to search in "Specific Places" and chooing the "mydrive" volume, and specifying to look for a file whose name "is" (not "contains") myfile.txt.
Time each search with a stopwatch, repeat several times and show us the results.

ok will give that a try
 

should I also use the finder window 'query'?

Sorry - I don't know what you mean by that. I see no such term in my Finder.

I was talking about using File/Find in Finder. I assumed that was what your original speed complaint was about.

Ok here are some results...
 

But first let me explain..

I did the search based upon how we performed our searches in OS 9, for example; file " SV123456 THIS IS A TEST " is the file I need to find, we would search by either the number or the possible description ( if whoever saved it assigned an appropriate name).

So when doing the test through terminal for an existing file I ask to find ie SV123456, although searching was quick it never found that file because it never exists ( at least not completely) I wouldn't remember the whole exact name of the file I need to find. And the same problem arises with the command F using 'is' rather than 'contains' -- I'm searching for part of the name structure.

So I did the search with contains--- it took over four minutes, did the same search with starts with 'SV123456' a little better
about 2. 20 secs but still nothing in comparison to OS 9 speed results, which was almost instant. And this is what baffles us, we have a supposed better OS but the find/search is painfully slow.

I hope this is offers a better understanding.



Thanks

Ok, it's good to have some quantitative results to compare to.
To summarize, a Finder search for:
contains SV123456
took 240 seconds, while a Finder search for:
starts with SV123456
took 140 seconds.
Is that correct? And what did you specify as to where the Finder should search? (the top part of the Find dialog)

Please try the 'find' in Terminal again using this command
(or the analog for some other file):

find /Volumes/mydrive -name 'SV123456*'

where of course you would replace the 'mydrive' with the actual name of your mounted drive.

The * at the end of the SV123456 makes it do a search like the Finder's "starts with". Please note the single quotes around the specification of the name in that command - they are necessary. It is probably best if you copy & paste the last part of the command from above after typing the beginning part.
How long does the 'find' command take to find the file?

s that correct?- YES
And what did you specify as to where the Finder should search? (the top part of the Find dialog) THE VOLUME NAME

ok terminal took-- over four minutes and still did not list the files --I stopped it. ( visually it went past where the file resides).

Find window specific places - volume selected took approx. 130 secs, but narrowing the search to a specific folder took even longer..over 2 mins.


Now I don't know if this may be result that I am now connected to the server via SMB rather that AFP, I can no longer connect this way for some odd reason.

Just for curiousity I did the same test on another unit that is able to connect via AFP, the results were very different.

terminal still couldn't find the file but it's search was extremely fast.

Find window- with volume selected took one min,
and with narrowing down to a specific folder took 30 secs,

so it seems something is weird with my setup.. I even did repair permissions but no luck.

You are likely making a mistake when you do the 'find' in Terminal. Please show us the full name of the file that you are searching for and show us (copy & paste) the 'find' command that you are using in Terminal.

But it seems that you have figured out the difference between your fast searches and your slow ones - it seems (from what you have said) to be related to the protocol (SMB versus AFP) used to mount the remote volume.

It seems likely that when you are in OS 9, the remote volume is mounted via AFP, but in OS X, you are mounting the volume via SMB.
You don't usually want to use SMB to mount volumes containing Macintosh files. It is usually used for mounting volumes with Windows files. SMB does not support type & creator info, so your files will not show up with the correct icons, will not open with the correct application, etc.

You should unmount the remote volume and then remount it using AFP. You could ask your system administrator about how to do this, but the usual way is to use Finder's "Connect to server" and type in a URL starting with "afp://" and followed by teh IP address of the remote machine.

Ok
 

the file is F527835 Full Sail pin.ai,
terminal: find /Volumes/vol2 'F527835*'

I know I should be using AFP but I get this: ( wish I could paste the window)

Connecting to afp:///at/artcom:upstairs...
Could not connect to the server because the name or password is not correct.

Try Again Cancel.

No matter what I try this is what the result is, the IT guy assumes that for some reason OSX switched from logining as clear text to encrypted and I can't figure out how to remove this problem and start fresh

Re: Ok
 

You forgot the "-name" part of the command. Try again with this command:

find /Volumes/vol2 -name 'F527835*'

I seem to recall this issue being discussed a few places a while ago. You should search on the main macosxhints site as well as on these forums for discussions of problems with passwords and file sharing.

Ahhhh...
 

very nice, a slight pause but within 10 secs voila...
just as quick as OS 9 used to be..

but to clairfy I was doing the test on the other machine that was running OSX, NOT OS9.. but using AFP connect.


thanks will do a search and see if I can fix my connection and run the test again through AFP.