" You should update to Mac OS X Server 10.2 if you are unable to save an existing file on Xserve.

Symptom
When saving an existing document on Xserve, an alert box with this message appears:

"Could not save <filename> because a file of the same name already exists".

Note: This issue may occur when you connect to server using Apple File Protocol (AFP).
Products affected

• Xserve
• Mac OS X Server 10.1.5

Solution: This issue is resolved in Mac OS X Server 10.2. You may upgrade to Mac OS X Server 10.2 using the Mac OS X Server Up-To-Date Program (http://www.apple.com/server/uptodate/).
Note: Mac OS X Server 10.1.4 with the Mac OS X 10.1.5 update installed is not affected by this issue."

(previous comments on the issue follow)

An Xserve owner sent a very long email with details on a problem he (and others) have seen saving modified Photoshop files to an XServe. (Note - the xserve owner that reported this didn't note that any of the suggestions helped. See the Kbase doc above for apple's comments that 10.2 solves this issue.)

Previous Reader Suggestions: Three readers sent tips/suggestions in reply to the problems noted below:

" Hi,
The solution to the Photoshop/Xserve file saving problem is to set Photoshop's 'Image Previews' preference (in the 'File Handling' section) to 'Never Save'. Note that any files you've already saved will have to be re-saved under a different name. Once you've done this, you should be able to open, modify and save files without problems.
(name witheld by request)" "

" ...I have some suggestions for this problem:
Assumed Symptom: User has RW access to folder but Photoshop cannot save to a file.

Check the file's permissions: I'll bet the user who is trying to save the updated file is not the owner and that the file has the default permissions of rwxr--r-- That means that he can read but not write to the file.

So the question is why can other apps do this?

They can't. The short answer is that some apps DELETE the original file (remember if you have RW access to the folder allows you to delete things) and then make a new copy of the file with the same name.

My guess is that Photoshop writes its new data into the old file which is disallowed by the permissions of the file.
Fun, huh?
(name witheld by request)"

" Hi Mike,
His email address wasn't in the article, so I'm replying to you.
Have him check to see what the permissions are on the Temporary Items folder at the root level of the network share. If that's not set up so that the user has read write and execute permissions then it causes Photoshop to go nuts soemtimes. Similar stuff is experienced using netatalk on Linux.

He'll have to make the changes in the Terminal, and he'll want to set the privileges (recursively) to at least RWX for both the owner, and the group, and he'll want to set the "Sticky bit" so that all files are created in the directory with the same permissions.
Robert Thiemann
Network Engineer
VCU Adcenter"

I sent all the suggestions to the Xserve owner to see if any helped.

Original Xserve Owner Report on the Problem:
(A copy of the reader's email follows - items bolded as they were in the original email)

" Hi there- here are some interesting problems I have had this week with my new Xserve.

I eagerly took delivery of my DP1GHz Xserve this week. After mounting it in our server rack I set it up for testing with a view to replacing our existing G4 667MHz running OS X Server 10.1.4.

I performed a 'vanilla' install of OS X Server 10.1.5 as supplied, worked through the setup assistant and all went well. The first problem encountered was that Apple's Server Monitor Software could not contact the Xserve unless reverse DNS lookups were enabled, or alternatively the hostname of the Xserve was set to localhost. The OS X server assistant software would not allow me to set localhost as the host name (this was an "invalid host name"). So I had to manually edit the hostconfig file as a root user - see Apple Knowledge Base article 106830. Server monitor worked fine after I made this change, but it was not exactly obvious.

I configured the three 120GB modules in bays 1, 2, and 3 as a single 360GB stripe and began configuring users and groups in server admin. Performance was excellent, and all went well until I enabled Windows services. After restart the Xserve would hang at the logon prompt. Booting from CD and running Disk First Aid reported a damaged bootstrap. As there were no options to repair in Disk First Aid, and the Xserve could not boot into Mac OS 9 (unsupported) to run DiskWarrior “ I was all out of options. After a re-install, everything worked fine again, so this was only a minor annoyance, but it does point to the need for a modern OSX capable directory repair utility.

The big problem however is that after further testing in my office my colleagues found that client Macs working on Photoshop files cannot save modified Photoshop files on the server. If you open a file on the server and attempt to save changes you get a message "Photoshop cannot save the changes as a file already exists with that name". This problem occurs with Photoshop 5.5, 6.0.1, and 7.0 in Mac OS 9.

The problem does not occur on our older G4 667 running OS X Server 10.1.4. Neither does the problem occur when the client Mac is running Photoshop 5.5, or 6.0 through Classic in OSX, or with Photoshop 7.0 running natively in OS X.

The problem does not occur with other major applications including Office 2201, Quark 4.11, Illustrator 8.0.1, etc etc.

As I have an Apple Premium Support pack I rang Apple to ask for help “ the tech support guy was very helpful, but was only able to tell me that the issue is a known problem, an has been escalated to the USA already. I am now waiting for them to get back to me.

The only software installed beyond the 10.1.5 that came with the Xserve is:

• Apple July 18 Security Update
• Apple August Security Update
• Apple Xserve Update 1.0

I cannot believe that Apple didnĂt find this problem in product testing. Many other Xserve users will suffer badly with this, as many Design agencies work with Photoshop files on their servers.

I would really appreciate any other user feedback on this issue.

I checked www.adobeforums.com and found this thread straight away:

Topic
Saving modified photoshop files
paulstoneham - 01:58am Jul 31, 2002 Pacific
I have recently networked our macs through the new apple xserver. Now, when trying to save a modified p/shop file I get an error message saying the file has been modified outside of p/shop and the a prompt to update the image, then when saving it says there is already a file open with this name. This then means I end up with a duplicate of the image everytime I make any changes and want to save them! Any ideas please...

---

Neil Keller - 06:47pm Jul 31, 2002 Pacific (#1 of 6)
Paul,
Are you saving locally (you should be), or across the network (bad idea)? Drag the file to your desktop to work. After a final save to the desktop, copy the art back to the server. Or is someone else simultaneously working on the same file (another bad idea)?
Neil

---

Chris Cox - 06:40pm Aug 7, 2002 Pacific (#2 of 6)
Check the clock on your machine and the server... they are out of sync.

---

Joe Duhamel - 07:33pm Aug 7, 2002 Pacific (#3 of 6)
...and when they are out of sync, you will run into image corruption, hence Neil's warning to work locally.

---

Chris Cox - 07:59pm Aug 7, 2002 Pacific (#4 of 6)
No, clocks being out of sync have nothing to do with image corruption - just bad dates on the files (which tricks Photoshop into thinking that someone modified the file).

---

greg larriva - 10:32pm Aug 7, 2002 Pacific (#5 of 6)
I am having the same issue as Paul. The problem I am having is from OS 9 and Photoshop 6 and 7 saving to either an OS X Server running 10.1.5 on a G3 and also on an Xserve. In PS7 when you modify an image that was saved over the network from PS originaly, and go to resave, you get the message "that the file cannot be saved because of a program error". When saving from PS6 you get the message that "a file with that name allready exists", but with no option to replace it. This is not time stamp related because all machines are running on a time server. There should be no reason to work locally when network transfer speeds over 100BaseT are in the range of 400 MBs per minute from XServe to G4. Modification of files in OS X over the network seems to work fine. I spent three hours on the phone today with Apple's Premium Support Staff and they could not reproduce the problem on their end with the same server and client workstations. They did tell me though that I was not the first one to report this problem to them. Any help would be appreciated.

---

Many thanks.
Kind Regards
Tim Benson "