I work with a weekly newspaper that has a Monday 6 PM deadline. We are using macOS Server 5.3.1 on Mac running macOS 10.12.6. Five clients are all also running 10.12.6, one is running 10.13.2. All are using InDesign CC 2018 (13.0.1). An additional 4 users also on OS 10.12.6 using latest InCopy 2018 (13.0.1). The entire network is 1 Gb/s, and user home folders are local only, not on the server. All network hardware and cabling has been tested good. All sharing is limited to SMB, and there are typically 15 users logged in with a maximum of 25.
All files (Word, Photoshop, AI, INDD etc.) are stored and edited on the server by multiple users WITHOUT problems, EXCEPT for 8 multi-page InDesign documents that are used to create groups of pages for each edition of the newspaper. These files exhibit no problems opening and saving by different users until Friday and Monday, at which point each of these documents are being opened and saved repeatedly by 2 to 5 users as the final pages are being constructed. Saved documents will INTERMITTENTLY open as "Read-only", and then must be "saved as" to another location and then used to replace the "read-only" version. The severity of this problem appears to get worse as the documents become larger and more complicated with links. The .indd documents themselves do not exceed 20MB in size, with all graphics being linked rather than embedded. All linked files are on the same share, which is in fact stored on a Thunderbolt Raid 5 array. I have propagated proper permissions through this entire sharepoint, and in addition given complete Read and Write permissions (including Delete) to the relevant User Group on the particular shared sub-folder where the documents reside using the Mac Server program. Restarting the server will temporarily fix the problem, but it comes back within an hour or two on the busy days. Simply turning FileSharing off and on does not solve the problem. I have not been able to try having all users log out or restart one at a time to try and isolate a possible “bad user” - they can’t interrupt their workflow any more than absolutely necessary when they are thrashing to meet a deadline - it’s faster just to reboot the server.
This sure has the feel of a temp file not being properly closed out and preventing the complete release of the saved document by the previous user, but all temp files appear to be closing out properly on each local computer. Is there someplace else I should be looking, or is there some setting on one or more clients that might be triggering the problem?
I realize that Adobe does not support editing files over a network, but it has worked reliably in the past (from CS4 to CC2015 with AFP sharing). This "read-only" problem has only happened in this form since upgrading the server and client OS's from 10.10.5 to 10.12.6, CC from 2017 to 2018, and forcing SMB sharing for all. HOWEVER, before these upgrades InDesign 2017 shared with AFP to Yosemite Server was intermittently quitting unexpectedly on all clients when attempting to save. Upgrading to El Capitan Server and SMB helped that problem, but then server restarts were being forced due to suddenly glacial network performance whenever a client logged in using AFP instead of SMB, and again on busy days for no apparent reason. Removed all AFP shares, upgraded server to Sierra and InDesign to 2018 to get to the current "read-only" problem. The current situation is better than the unexpected quits, but it is by no means ideal, and having it be intermittent on their busiest days just adds to the frustration.
Any ideas at all would be greatly appreciated!
