NAS Access in Catalina issues

I respect the suggestion of posting detailed specs here, but I don't think you guys are aware of the full history of this thread. That's because a lot of earlier postings have been deleted, and users banned for talking about the same topic, i.e. how to encourage Apple to finally address these NAS issues. Heck, I'll probably get banned just for mentioning that history, but I think you newer users to the thread have the right to know the full story.

Apple's engineers have had detailed reports and system logs from many of us on these issues for 6+ months. Last fall, several users (including me) were told by senior Apple support people that NAS issues were just a lower priority than issues with conversations of 32-bit apps, but might be addressed after. Now those other issues are long closed, but the NAS issues persist. Whatever is causing them is likely known to Apple, but time-consuming or costly to fix. Apple has no financial incentive, and actually quite a strong disincentive (i.e. revenues for their own storage and cloud solutions), to put in the time to address these issues. NAS support is just not enough of a deal-breaker for enough users to actually affect Apple's sales.

Now, on the other hand, device manufacturers have contracts with Apple to integrate with and license Apple's hardware and software. For those manufacturers, such as Synology, these issues have a much larger impact to their revenues. What Mac user is going to buy a NAS if it's widely known that they don't work with the current versions of OSX? We need to keep filing tickets with the device manufacturers, and encouraging them to push Apple for a fix. That's the only way these issues are likely to get resolved.

It's also worth noting that this goes further than just NAS connectivity issues. I'm having the exact issues described here accessing SMB shares from a large hardware raid running on a windows server box. I suspect anyone who does something like collaborative video production on a Mac over ethernet shares will be running into this issue if they leave their workstations encoding overnight as I typically do.

This isn't specific to the likes of Synology at all. It's an issue with how Finder is handling SMB shares or perhaps even how it resolves DNS locally. I'm always able to connect via IP even when trying to connect via machine name or even sidebar favourites have given up working.

Mac's are superb video editing machines, but this is a pretty significant flaw in that area. Is it time for another Snow Leopard style release yet?

@bsanders44

You probably hit the nail on its head as Apple had been invited several times to join the discussion but they didn't. From my point of view it would be a great opportunity for them to benefit from collaborating with this active group and the insights provided.

So, Apple, as mentioned many times before, please take action. Joining the discussion would be great as well.

And for all of us, please keep filing tickets with your hardware vendor as suggested by @bsanders44. This issue must be sorted rather sooner than later as it not only impacts NAS users.

I have what seems a very similar issue with an Apple to Apple connection. We are using a Mac mini with Catalina (10.15.4) as a local DNS and file server - we have experienced intermittent loss of DNS from other Mac clients on the local network (all now running Catalina) and this seems to be getting worse over time. Mostly the issue can be "fixed" by disconnecting the Wifi or ethernet connection on the client Mac and then reconnecting it - seems to find the DNS server again when this is done. As times goes on we seem to have do this more often and sometimes even this does not work.

I was going to discard our MacOS server and try using a NAS instead but after reading this thread I can see that we are likely to have the same sort of problems with that too.

After 15 years as a loyal Apple customer I am very close to the point of selling all our Apple devices and moving our business over to Windows or another alternative platform. Very frustrating.

Has anyone given it a try and used a network package analysis tool (like Whireshark) to find differences in the communication with the NAS server, between Catalina and previous versions? Just an idea ... because if the traffic to the NAS server would be identical compared to Mojave, this would be the evidence that the issue is with Finder.

Hi I have Catalina 10.5.5 and Synology nas TS-251+ firm ver 4.4.2 1302

I use AFP connection, I found the HD in the TM Backup

but it failed after some minutes

I have other 2 mac with Mojave and the backup works correctly

Did apple fix the problem?

Thank you

Franco

Not as far as i can see. It all depends on Finder's mood of the day. Sometimes things go as they should, sometimes not at all. Sometimes Finder works as it did in the past, sometimes only for a few hours or days. Then the issues come back.

From my perspective I still see these 3 main Finder issues in Catalina:

. Stability (freezing and ability to be relaunched)

. Performance (speed for typical processes, such as copying or viewing pictures)

. Consistency (getting same result when a certain task is being repeated)

And yes, it does affect the connection to my NAS system, but it goes beyond that. Sometimes viewing pictures in full screen via <alt><space> goes well and quick, but sometimes it takes 2-5 minutes to display the next picture. You never know up-front.

Nothing like I was used to getting from Apple. Now it feels just like any other buggy software ...

I also had problems with MacOS and a Synology Diskstation for quite some time now. I kept restarting Finder but since my daughter lost parts of her homework because the network share did not reconnect I got tired of this workaround and tried to fix the issue.

As it was already mentioned the major problem seems to be name resolution. At the moment I am testing two "fixes" which have proven to work at least for a day.

1) Using hosts file for overriding name resolution: I added entries for my diskstation in the hosts file (/etc/hosts) on my mac.

192.168.1.10    diskstation
192.168.1.10    diskstation.local
192.168.1.10    diskstation._smb._tcp.local

Maybe only the last line is really important (The IP address and the name has to be changed to the actual address and name).

2) Addressing the share by it's local domain: In my network the dns is provided by a router running OpenWRT. The Local domain is configured to be "lan" by default (corresponding to option domain 'lan' in /etc/config/dhcp on OpenWRT).

I started using both methods some hours ago and have not lost the connection to my NAS yet even though I repeatedly let MacOS go to sleep.

Dnsmasq is running on an OpenWRT router providing the IPv4 addresses in my network. I defined a static lease for my diskstation (Network -> DHCP and DNS -> Static Leases) so it is always assigned the same IPv4 address and also has a defined hostname (in my case "diskstation"). In the general settings (Network -> DHCP and DNS -> General Settings) is an option for "Local domain" which is "lan" by default. So for all host names (like "diskstation") this local domain suffix is appended. So in my network i can access my diskstation with "diskstation.lan".

This is also the name which can be used to access the network share on MacOS: "smb://diskstation.lan"

@Bruno_I @MikeApp, I was not able to reproduce your proposal to solve the problem, unfortunately I fail in some steps, my knowledge is not sufficient.

However, @hop1967, with your link (https://www.techarp.com/software/macos-catalina-nas-failure/), I had a look and I tried, and so far it works fine (what I was missing is to connect using CTRL+K and then smb://DiskStation/).

So far, works fine, let's see in few days...

Fly_PetitPrince

Unfortunately, I believe potential fixes involving DNS, network settings, and local names/network aliases were already tried and ruled out earlier in this thread. Many of us have even tried connecting via a static IP to the NAS, but the issue recurs after some time, especially if the computer and/or NAS are restarted.

To anyone who believes they may have fixed their issue using some process outlined in this thread, please try restarting both your computer and your NAS and see if the issue recurs. So far it appears to have recurred for everyone who's tried.

@Fly_PetitPrince

The Techarp "fix" does not work for me and most others. Have you tried restarting both your computer and your NAS? For most of us the issue recurs at some point, especially after restarting the NAS.

@exvo

I'm going to try bij Cemento's workaround and will post my results. My problems have been severe from this issue, and thus far nothing else has worked for me.

@bsanders44 @Datajack,

I re-started both NAS and Mac, and all fine so far, but have you followed the item #10 in the link provided:

10. Then key in smb://ServerName/ (in our example, smb://DiskStation/) and click Connect.

I had also SMB3 enable and it was not working, now that I added this step above, it works (maybe it will pop up again in a near future, but so far so good...)

Fly_PetitPrince.

Yes, I have used the "Go > Connect to server" method, and it only made the problem worse. My machine still lost connection to the NAS, but after rebooting the NAS no longer appeared anywhere, including in the Network sidebar. I had to remove the "Connect to server" configuration, clear all caches and keys, clear out all the connections from the NAS, and then restart my computer several times to get the NAS to show up again in the sidebar.

We need to very careful to qualify any potential fix or workaround as being a "possible fix" or "possible workaround" so as to not muddy the waters on this issue. Too many users (such as the Techarp writer) have tried something quickly, declared it a permanent and universal fix, and then forgotten to update when the issue recurs, or ignored those users for whom the fix didn't work.

This thread has, for better or worse, become the defacto document on this issue. In the off chance that Apple ever bothers to reengage with this issue, we don't want them to see inaccurate or unvetted "solutions", and then move on to some other issue. We also don't want to confuse users who are encountering this issue for the first time.

Until there is an approach that is verified by numerous users, for an extended period of time without recursion, we only have "possible fixes" and "possible workarounds". Let's continue to catalog them, test and monitor them, and report our results back to the group, but not declare a solution until we've thoroughly vetted it.