When the option of remembering recent servers is checked in the Apple Menu Options control panel, an alias to a recently accessed server is placed in the recent servers folder. Since this server alias could potentially be navigated with hierarchical menus starting at Recent Servers:<server alias>, Apple Menu Options enumerates and caches all files and folders on the server. Up to four levels of menus could be extended (five is the maximum menu hierarchy, and the first level is used to navigate to the Recent Servers folder), so AMO acquires HFS structure information for the top four levels of folders and files. Depending on the access of the given user to this server, this can result in slow connect time.
Since each server user can have different folder access privileges to the volume, the time it takes for AMO to acquire and cache the information for one user might be vastly different from another. The Administrator with access to all folders, might experience longer waits than a user with only access to a single drop folder. Apple Menu Options will only access folder information that the user has privileges to. The interior of a drop folder cannot be seen, so nothing beyond the first level is acquired. This represents the two most extreme cases.
Another simple example between two users might be when each has access to just a single folder to store their files. One user may create a wide and deep folder structure inside their user folder. The second user may not use any folder hierarchy, but just store files at the top level. User one will have a longer connect time to the server than user two.
The width and depth of the folder structure that the user has access to on a server affects how much information AMO needs to acquire from that server.
If you wish to avoid these slowdowns, rather than disabling and removing Apple Menu Options completely, disable the Recent Servers option in the Apple Menu Options Control Panel. This enables the user to still use hierarchical menus to access Control Panels, Recent Files and Recent Applications. Aliases to servers can still be created by the user and stored somewhere other than the Apple Menu Items or a subfolder. This will keep Apple Menu Options from "exploring" the server file system.
Article Change History:
31 Jul 1995 - Added information on server access.
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