WD Live wakes from sleep every 30 minutes whenever an AFP share is mounted.

[sbeattie2]

Last night at 7pm I mounted a share from my Mac (OS X 10.7.2 Lion) via SMB specifically (smb://MyBookLive.local) and the MyBookLive behaved "normally" - for the mostpart.  That is it only woke one or two times during the night.  So the 30 minute wake seems to be AFP related.

Here is the log after mounting the share via SMB - up through this morning.

Nov  9 18:57:22 localhost logger: exit standby after 2216  <-- Login and mount share via smb://MyBookLive.local

Nov  9 19:22:09 localhost logger: Enter standby                  <-- Sleep

Nov  9 19:23:12 localhost logger: exit standby after 63       <-- Wake (this is a little strange)

Nov  9 19:34:20 localhost logger: Enter standby                  <-- Sleep

Nov  9 19:41:48 localhost logger: exit standby after 448     <-- Not sure why it woke here

Nov  9 19:52:56 localhost logger: Enter standby                   <-- Sleep

Nov  9 22:11:44 localhost logger: exit standby after 8328   <-- Wake after 2hrs 20 min ?  Not sure why.

Nov  9 22:22:52 localhost logger: Enter standby                   <-- Sleep

Nov 10 04:15:45 localhost logger: exit standby after 21173 <-- wake after sleep for 6hrs ?  Not sure why.

Nov 10 04:26:54 localhost logger: Enter standby                   <-- Sleep

Nov 10 08:21:30 localhost logger: exit standby after 14076  <-- Wake after 4 hours when I logged in.

I hope this helps.

~Scott

[sbeattie2]

Can somebody explain the numbers after the "exit standby after xxxxxxx"  are these the process id's that cause the drive to "wake"?  Or do they signify some type of event id?

[suley]

it's time I guess

[WDTony]

The additional fixed involved several components. Our communications manager was touching the Datavolume when it should not have been, and there was a bug in the monitorio.sh script where the io counter was not being cleared in some circumstances.

[sbeattie2]

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WDTony wrote:

We will have an additional fix to help with this sleep issue in the next firmware release.

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Hi Tony - I installed the latest firmware from a couple of weeks ago 02.10.09-124.  I did not see any reference to this issue being addressed in this release.  The problem still occurs - (wake every 30 minutes) while an AFP mount is active.  I am assuming this did not make the release - can you confirm?

Scott

[richUK]

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sbeattie2 wrote:

Can somebody explain the numbers after the "exit standby after xxxxxxx"  are these the process id's that cause the drive to "wake"?  Or do they signify some type of event id?

---

It's time in seconds since the last event. In your case since the drive went into standby.

[sbeattie2]

Over the holidays I made some discoveries about the behavior of my Apple Time Capsule with regards to AFP mounted shares.  I don't know if this will shed any light on the 30 minute wakeup issue with the MBL - but I think that what I observered with the Time Capsule behavior may prove important.

The Time Capsule does not have a user-defined option to control the inactivity period of when the drive spins down.  It appears that after about 3 minutes of inactivity the Time Capsule Drive will spin down - regardless of whether an AFP share is mounted on a Mac.  I believe this short timeout period is by design - as the Time Capsule is primarily intended as a backup device to be used with Time Machine and theoretically the Time Capsule should be sleeping most of the time.  Since time machine only requires the drive about once per hour - this short timeout make sense.  In other use cases - this short timeout could prove to be annoyting.

The Time Caspule is also a network drive where you can mount folders via AFP (the default) or via SMB - just as you can do with the MBL.  But here is the behavioral difference I noticed while carefully monitoring the Time Capsule over a period of time with an active share mounted via AFP.

After mounting a share (via AFP) the Time Capsul spins down after about 3 minutes - if you don't access the share.  Every once in a while (can't say whether it is 30 minutes or not) the Time Capsule will spin up for about 15 seconds and then spin down immediately.  I can only assume the Mac is asking the Time Capsule to validate that the share is still alive.  Since the 15 second spin up is so quick - it would most likely go unnoticed by someone who is not watching or listening for it.

This periodic short spin up and down - only seems to happen when there is an AFP share mounted on a Mac.  When the Mac that has the share mounted is sleeping - the drive does not spin up for 15 seconds.

Whenever a sleeping Mac is woken - and it has an AFP share mounted - the Time Capsule will also spin up for 15 seconds - either immediately or shortly after the Mac has woken.

If I mount the share via SMB - the Time Capsule does not spin up at all - as if it doesn't seem to care whether the SMB share is still alive.

On the MBL the behavior is as follows:  (assuming the minimum 10 minute inactivity period)

The MBL will sleep after 10 minutes if the share is not access,  it will then spin up (for 10 minutes) every 30 minutes.

When the Mac - which has the share mounted via AFP - the MBL will spin up (possibly to validate the share?) and then remain spinning for at least 10 minutes - after which the 30 minute cycle of waking repeats.  But the wake always occurs at x:20 and x:50 hours.

The 30 minute wake also continues to occur - for 6 or more hours - even when the Mac that has the mounted share is sleeping - as well as when the MBL is completely disconnected from the network (if it is on its own switch and the cable connecting the switch to the rest of the network is pulled).

So what I was trying to point out here.  With SMB - the drives never spin up unexpectedly (whther MBL or Time Capsule).  With AFP - the Time Capsule spins up periodically for 15 seconds (on Mac Wake and while Mac is awake).  The MBL - wakes every 30 minutes - even when the connection to the network is removed.

I don't know if this information will help WD troubleshoot the problem - or whether it is totally irrelevant - it is just the behavior that I observed.

~Scott 

[ravelord]

I too have noticed the same behaviour, Macbook Pro 10.6 - while sleeping the Macbook seems to wake up the drive every 30 minutes. I will verify tonight with a packet analyzer that I have on my firewall whether there really is some kind of network traffic originating from the macbook pro.

I use most of the time SMB now since that didn't cause any problems...

[sbeattie2]

To ravelord - while you are monitoring this - you will notice also that if you happen to have your MBL on a secondary switch - you can unplug the switch from the rest of the network - and the MBL will still continue waking every 30 minutes - at this point - it's not the Mac that is doing it - because the Mac is no longer talking to it.  If you don't discconnect the MBL - and you shutdown the Mac - the waking stops.  What doesn't make sense is how it is possible for the MBL to keep waking every 30 minutes when the switch it is connected to is physically disconnected from the rest of the network as well as from the Mac which has the share mounted.  It's almost as if having a network link signal is satisfying the MBL that it is connected to the network.  What is making it wake if it is not the Mac sending it a request?

Also this waking is always at hh:20 and hh:50 past the hour.  When I monitor my Time Capsule with an AFP share mounted - although it wakes periodically - it's not at 20 and 50 past.

There are also some weird things going on with AFP on the Mac side - ever since 10.6.8 - not sure whether these oddities are contributing to the MBL strange behavior.

~Scott

[ravelord]

Strangely enough tonight it didn't wake :-) I closed my Macbook at 23:30. So technically it woke up one time but that could be another device running in the house...

Jan 11 23:52:13 localhost logger: Enter standby
Jan 11 23:53:16 localhost logger: exit standby after 63
Jan 12 00:13:32 localhost logger: Enter standby
Jan 12 08:56:34 localhost logger: exit standby after 31381

Also, no traffic in my packet capture.

sbeattle2, maybe it is the other way around: some AFP related process on the MBL tries to verify the macbook pro's mounted volume. That would explain why it is still waking when only connected to a secondary switch. I will check again tonight to see if it sends out any traffic to (not only my IP this time) anywhere on the LAN.