SMB and macOS Catalina

[0xlucas]

As I said earlier I have the same problem, not on FreeNAS, but on a Qnap and I seem to have "fixed" my problem by enabling SMB3 on my NAS (I was at SMB 2.1). It's been 48 hours and I haven't experienced problem connecting to an SMB share (smb://...)

For future reference, here's what I did since the option wasn't available anywhere in the GUI :

How to enable SMB 3 on your QNAP NAS (TS-659 Pro+) – markuszehnle.com

I will report back if the error comes back, but so far so good.

 

[seanm]

I already have 'server min protocol = SMB3_00' and I have this issue.

I'm still waiting on my coworkers to report if macOS 10.15.3 and/or FreeNAS 11.3 have fixed this... I'll follow up too once they do.

 

[seanm]

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.

@anodos we'll try increasing the log level. Console is such a firehose though, do you know which process name to filter against? A quick test on my machine suggests that changes kernel logging...

BTW: a coworker has confirmed this issue still occurs for him on macOS 10.15.3.

 

[anodos]

@anodos we'll try increasing the log level. Console is such a firehose though, do you know which process name to filter against? A quick test on my machine suggests that changes kernel logging...

BTW: a coworker has confirmed this issue still occurs for him on macOS 10.15.3.

You can also turn off samba's deadtimer. I removed this setting from 11.3 because recent MacOS versions have shown erratic behavior regarding reconnects. Add the setting deadtime = 0 under Services->SMB.

 

[JamesNisly]

When you said you removed the setting in 11.3 do you mean you removed "deadtime = 0" from your samba services or you removed deadtime by setting it equal to zero?

Erratic reconnection behavior is exactly what all of us have been experiencing. I'm excited to try this out and see if this does the trick but how in the world are us mere mortals supposed to know about these things?

 

[anodos]

When you said you removed the setting in 11.3 do you mean you removed "deadtime = 0" from your samba services or you removed deadtime by setting it equal to zero?

Erratic reconnection behavior is exactly what all of us have been experiencing. I'm excited to try this out and see if this does the trick but how in the world are us mere mortals supposed to know about these things?

I removed the parameter (which has been in FreeNAS for a very long time). It's a trade-off for memory usage in really large environments.

 

[KevDog]

Hi guys - I have MacOS Catalina 10.15.3 along with FreeNAS 11.3. I want to make sure I understand the issue you are having.

According to the original post - if I'm interpreting it right -- the poster is connecting to the SMB share through the Finder. If he "Ejects the disk" and then tries to reconnect to the share through the Finder, he can not reconnect unless he reboots the machine.

If I'm interpreting this issue correctly -- then I don't have this problem
I have the following VFS Objects: catia, fruit, streams_xattr, zfs_space, zfsacl -- and I'm willing to change these parameters in order to do some testing if needed.

What exactly does the new setting do differently than the old: catia ixnas fruit streams_xattr. I assume the ACL's are be handled by ixnas (freenas) rather than zfs? I've reviewed this thread about ixnas, https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/configuration-options-for-ixnas.75835/

 

[adrianwi]

I can't even pretend to understand all this stuff, but I switched from using AFP shares to SMB shares, and while the connection has been a little more stable, they are not as fast for transferring data.

Discovery in Finder is also still hit and miss, and I still find myself having to restart the service to see the FreeNAS device in the left-hand Finder menu. Things tend to work better using Go > Connect to Server, but I don't understand why that should be any different.

I'm still struggling with Time Machine and SMB, although it didn't work very reliably using AFP on FreeNAS, so it's no real loss. I have alternative backup strategies now, so Time Machine is an extra level of protection if/when it works.

 

[KevDog]

@adrianwi

Another option beyond time machine you may want to consider -- and run parallel in testing -- would be Vorta. It has a nice Mac UI and it uses borg the backup engine. Borg is file based rather than block based, however it very efficient in that it processes diffs rather than whole files, and if you want it can store files encrypted on the remote. You can also setup an auto prune schedule that will limit how long backups are kept. I'll admit its not quite as nice in searching for files as "Enter Time Machine" however for backing up home directories and data on the computer, it does pretty good.

 

[seanm]

Well it's been a 6 days since I updated to 11.3 and so far none of my coworkers have seen this since.

What about the rest of you?

 

[JamesNisly]

Its been about two weeks now without any disconnect issues. I have no idea what changed but evidently something did.

 

[KevDog]

For me the disconnects occur randomly and I would estimate about 1-2x per month. I would encourage @exitmusic and @seanm to just keep testing for at least a month before jumping to conclusions.

 

[seanm]

KevDog, you're seeing those monthly disconnects only with Catalina or older macOS too?

 

[KevDog]

@seanm
I saw these disconnects or need to recreate the TimeMachine Archive in Catalina and the version prior to Catalina.

 

[seanm]

@KevDog, occasionally needing to recreate TimeMachine backups I see back to at least macOS 10.12. I don't think it has anything to do with the topic of this thread, which is frequent disconnects that started only with 10.15.

 

[KevDog]

@seanm
I'm not sure if once to twice a month is frequent, nor is having to recreate the Time Machine backups. I guess the major issue is that I set up a comparison time machine setup on Arch Linux that is run within a the xcp-ng hypervisor (open source Citrix) on another machine separate than FreeNAS. I've had this setup for about 6 months. Not once in 6 months have I seen this linux hypervisor have any disconnect or need to recreate the backup. I'm not sure if its a Linux thing, FreeBSD/FreeNAS thing or what, however from my observation, for me the linux TimeMachine implementation is more reliable -- which kind of sucks since I'd prefer to use FreeNAS as a NAS.

 

[seanm]

I'm not sure if once to twice a month is frequent

No, this thread is talking about disconnects that happen more like hourly. And only in 10.15.

nor is having to recreate the Time Machine backups. I guess the major issue is that I set up a comparison time machine setup on Arch Linux that is run within a the xcp-ng hypervisor (open source Citrix) on another machine separate than FreeNAS. I've had this setup for about 6 months. Not once in 6 months have I seen this linux hypervisor have any disconnect or need to recreate the backup. I'm not sure if its a Linux thing, FreeBSD/FreeNAS thing or what, however from my observation, for me the linux TimeMachine implementation is more reliable -- which kind of sucks since I'd prefer to use FreeNAS as a NAS.

There are other threads about Time Machine issues. This thread is not about that.