SMB and macOS Catalina

[dexamenos]

I have recently upgraded to macOS 10.15.1 Catalina and noticed following behaviour with my FreeNAS 11.2-U7:

With a freshly booted Mac, I have no problem with connecting any of the FreeNAS Shares. However, as soon as I disconnect any of the shares the first time, a second connect is only possible if I restart the Mac.

A restart of FreeNAS (or just the SMB service) is of no help.

Peculiar: connecting from Windows via Parallels from the same Mac works like a charm.

According to what I have written above, I would rule out a FreeNAS issue, nevertheless: I'm posting here because maybe some has the same expirience.

 

[sretalla]

Do you have the VFS objects for fruit and ixnas enabled and have you removed zfs_space and zfsacl?

 

[seanm]

With a freshly booted Mac, I have no problem with connecting any of the FreeNAS Shares. However, as soon as I disconnect any of the shares the first time, a second connect is only possible if I restart the Mac.

Hmmm, interesting. Where I work we have one employee that accidentally "upgraded" to Catavista and also had connection problems that were solved by a reboot. Not sure if it followed a deliberate disconnection of a share though. I'll follow up with him and see...

I'd bet on a macOS bug, and suggest you file one with Apple.

 

[dexamenos]

Do you have the VFS objects for fruit and ixnas enabled and have you removed zfs_space and zfsacl?

I did have the "old" configuration with vfs objects = catia zfs_space zfsacl fruit streams_xattr. Just changed this morning to catia ixnas fruit streams_xattr, however, behaviour stays the same: after reboot of Mac, connection to FreeNAS is instantaneously; after first disconnect, no connection possible until reboot.

Also: smbutil view smb://<freenas-hostname> is working fine after fresh reboot (pretty immediate response); it is hanging though, when in no-connection-possible-mode. (Even Ctrl-C is not doing its job; terminates until approx. 2 min with error message).

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Now the more weird stuff: a second Mac (MacBook Air Mid 2012) seems to have no problems, at least as observed so far.

I will watch more closely what happens in my iMac Late 2014; I suspect it has nothing to do with disconnect but maybe it is more related to not properly coming back from sleep mode.

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Feedback Report has been posted to Apple. I reflect any findings here.

 

[sretalla]

Just changed this morning to catia ixnas fruit streams_xattr,

Did you restart the SMB service on the FreeNAS server after making those changes?

 

[dexamenos]

Did you restart the SMB service on the FreeNAS server after making those changes?

Yes, did several tests: first only service restart, then complete machine restart. No change in behaviour.

What I do not understand: the other MacBook works without issue

 

[JamesNisly]

I found this thread because I am having what I think is the same issue with Catalina. I can find my FreeNAS server under Network in finder and connect to my shares just fine but they periodically disconnect and I can't reconnect to them with that same method without restarting Catalina.

I did, however, discover that I can reconnect without restarting of I simply use "Connect to Server" in finder and connect with SMB://IP_Address/Share instead of browsing to the shares in finder.

Since I reconnected to my shares via that method, I have yet to experience another disconnect. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Hopefully, this gets sorted with the next Catalina update.

 

[seanm]

macOS 10.15.2 is now out. Anyone repro since?

 

[dexamenos]

I did, however, discover that I can reconnect without restarting of I simply use "Connect to Server" in finder and connect with SMB://IP_Address/Share instead of browsing to the shares in finder.

seems to have nothing to do with hostname or addresses; I check all possibilities without any change in behaviour

 

[dexamenos]

macOS 10.15.2 is now out. Anyone repro since?

I am just in the progress of downloading the upgrade. However, will need at least two days for checking as weird behaviour only occurs "on the next day".

I'm more and more convinced that the issue it is to be solved on Apple's side and has maybe sth to do with sleeping the network adaptor. I have turned Power Nap back on and it seemed to work the other week. (I have it back "off" now and surveying)

 

[seanm]

I have another coworker that just updated from 10.14 to 10.15.2 and now sees this too. So I guess 10.15.2 didn't fix it. :(

 

[dexamenos]

I cannot reproduce the issue with macOS 10.15.2. I have tried for several days with PowerNap on and off. I'm puzzled .. or at least: 10.15.2 seams to have fixed it as I have not changed anything in FreeNAS

 

[0xlucas]

Didn't have the issue with Catalina 10.15.1, but I now have the described issue with a Qnap and OS X 10.15.2. After a fresh reboot I can connect to any SMB shares, but after a while the only way to reconnect a share is to reboot the computer... that is super annoying!

 

[seanm]

Well, I guess if it happens with Qnap too it's not a FreeNAS bug. Does Qnap use Samba too? I suppose it could be a Samba bug, but we have yet to see this issue happen from a Mac client to a Mac SMB server, and Apple doesn't use Samba.

We should all files bugs at https://feedbackassistant.apple.com to help increase the priority.

 

[JamesNisly]

There’s absolutely nothing in the release notes about these issues but does someone want to give 10.15.3 a try and see if things are magically any better?

 

[0xlucas]

There’s absolutely nothing in the release notes about these issues but does someone want to give 10.15.3 a try and see if things are magically any better?

I will install 10.15.3 and report back soon.

 

[JamesNisly]

I woke up this morning with another broken network connection with 10.15.2. In a fit of frustration I "upgraded" to .3 thinking I don't have much to lose at this point since if this doesn't do the trick I'll just go back to Mojave.

Running 10.15.3 now and I'll probably know sometime tomorrow if anything has improved since it usually takes about a day to bomb out in my experience.

 

[0xlucas]

Got the same problem after a while, 10.15.3 didn't fix it for me... *sad*

 

[JamesNisly]

aw man. was just about to report “so far so good”. I’ll keep you posted.

 

[anodos]

I'm on MacOS Catalina and can't reproduce this behavior. You can increase logging on the MacOS client by using the following sysctl on the Mac
sudo sysctl net.smb.fs.loglevel=42 and reviewing the Console logs on the Mac when trying to reconnect to the share.