NAS Access in Catalina issues

PS. I should add that I'm also using this approach on my wife's computer, which is a mid-2013 MacBook Air, also running OSX Catalina, and it's working there, as well. That's in addition to my 2019 17-inch MacBook Pro.

@bsanders44: thanks for sharing

By the way, I am still on Mojave and occasionally have the disconnect popup/dialog too, I just click Ignore and everything is fine. I am mentioning this because maybe it is not related to the Catalina bug.

Finder stability has dramatically improved since I upgraded to the latest Catalina version (10.15.5).

However, reliability for SMB / NAS connections have not improved with 10.15.5. Therefore, this workaround is absolutely essential.

In my case, it works like a charm for several days now. No reboots necessary anymore.

Just wanted to post an update re: Cemento's workaround (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250794335?answerId=252112800022#252112800022)

It's now been 3 weeks, and it's still working for me. As I mentioned before, there are still some hiccups with this workaround, but nothing compared to what I was experiencing before (i.e. having various apps crash/hang, and having to reboot my computer every day.)

In this thread unfortunately some different topics are discussed in a confused way.

Originally it was about the fact that after a certain time it is no longer possible to access a Sysnology NAS in the Finder and instead of the content only a folder icon is displayed. After a restart of the Finder it works again. So it is a Finder problem.

Unfortunately, we also discuss TimeMachine problems here, which have a completely different cause and do not contribute to the solution of the original problem.

Martin Deisting's suggestion also refers to a setting when the Mac is running as a server and has little to nothing to do with NAS connections that are not accessible in the Finder. This is no secret information either, but documented since Mac OS 10.11, as can be seen in the corresponding support document from Apple.

Hi jmow.

I feel, the community needs a little more than this short reply.

Unless you would provide more info, I also tend to assess your reply to be misleading.

So - i propose a set of answers like:

which issue of the many in this thread is it, you refer to.

What does solve mean - a workaround - or a sustainable solution provided by apple via a new OS version

If so, which version are you refering to?

Does that also fix the super silly performance issue with the file preview when working over the net e.g. on the NAS

etc etc

Happy to receive your reply.

best

@jmschuh

With all due respect: the problem with the Time Machine share on my Synology NAS is directly related with the problems with other share on that same Synology. All shares drop from Finder (including Time Machine), can sometimes be re-activated by killing Finder, but most of the time this is not working either.

On the other hand, the work-around by Bob Zelin and apparently drafted by Apple, not by me). You mention that this fix is for a Mac server. However this fix has fortunately relieved me from ALL problems with my Synonology NAS, including the problems with Time Machine.

As far as I know, there has not been a root cause analysis for " the problem", let alone the solution for this, so from where I stand it is not possible to determine whether observations are related or not.

I don't really care what you call this fix, but for me this is working.

Best regards,

Martin

JPG_master, now that your posting has been deleted , you may understand why I wrote what I had to write the way I wrote it. Datajack did not quite understand that and his post had been deleted too, ironically.

In other words, the issue has not been solved in Catalina so far and there are indications to assume that Apple has no intentions to solve this issue in Catalina at all.

And they never had the guts to apologize or offer an official workaround. Deeply frustrating.

On the other hand, this user group is great and managed to come up with excellent work-arounds and other very useful information. Thanks all for that!

Hi Mike_App,

thx for the honour, citating me.

The price was .... census again.

Guys fom apple, you can - as much as you want - apply the hongkong approach - the TRUTH will not change.

And the truth is not warm and promissing ... it is ice cold and dark ... Mordor is a family home compared to that truth.

So .. i do not care ... hurry up and delete. But those guys with email notification .. they have it anyhow in their mailbox .. the truth.

Like:

• I was an apple nerd. but I have seen so many silly design decisions.
• So many things that get worse and many many gimmick stuff but not an increase of productivity.

All this - despite your motivation - will cause me to behave as follows:

• NO NEW Version on my machine until it publicly is noted as stable and those things needed at most do their work.
• NEVER again trust a new release. I was very trustful - by experience - and this time did ignore the admin katechism .. I did NOT Backup.

...

My Mac btw is a New Pro Book with 32 gigs of RAM and the FINDER brings this machine to almost stop working.

UNBELIEVABLE for the costs of the netincome of two months of a standard family.

• THAT is NOT acceptable.
• Regain trust and believe of your customers and stop the way you develop NEW concepts and technology that is gimmick based.
• Take your customers serious .. without them you'd not be on earth.
• wrong attempt.

Retrospectively, I think so much has changed in macOS's internals with the switch to Apple Silicon (pure speculation on my part because I have no information other that than presented at WWDC 2020, but I'm trying to read between the lines and decipher the big picture), that Apple nonetheless limited engineering resources were properly better allocated in preparing this tour de force, than fixing the mundane bug that we on this thread have been wresting with for months.

This bug has been a constant irritation to me for 10 months, I've searched for solutions, I've open tickets with Synology and Apple, I've even written to Tim (twice, in fact), but now I understand why it was like talking to the void, because they were focusing on the next big step, and in a sense I'm glad that they did.

Of course, a simple word of acknowledgment would have meant a lot to me -and to others, on this thread-, loyal customers as we are, but the new macOS is so thrilling, and not just visually, it's quick, it's damm quick, even the beta, that it looks like it's on track to become the next Snow Leopard. And that's only seeing it run on Intel processors. What will it be on Apple Silicon? I can't wait to see the announcements in the fall.

Don’t mix things. TM corruption on NAS most of the cases is due to NAS misconfiguration. Personally I had this issue with a wrong disk format (HFS journled on a Linux NAS. The other issue (host any longer reachable) instead comes from a finder lookup issue. Very different story. I had multiple crash on finder due to the latter but never a TM issue.

@Cemento

In my case the connection issue is also responsible for the "Time Machine backup corrupted" issue. After applying the Bob Zelin workaround, the connection with the NAS was working again and the "TM corruption" did not re-occur. Nothing was changed on the NAS TM config. This NAS config was working 4 years in advance, with only 1 interruption (after the migration to Mojave).

Best regards,

Martin

@Martin Deisting,

Martin Deisting wrote:

@Cemento

In my case the connection issue is also responsible for the "Time Machine backup corrupted" issue. After applying the Bob Zelin workaround, the connection with the NAS was working again and the "TM corruption" did not re-occur. Nothing was changed on the NAS TM config. This NAS config was working 4 years in advance, with only 1 interruption (after the migration to Mojave).

Best regards,

Martin

Thanks for confirming that this issue also block TM, I am eager to test 10.15.6 where some people reported it was solving the issue... I am a bit sceptic that it won't re-occur in few days, let's cross finger.

Fly

I held off installing Catalina for a long time because I read about the SMB issues. Three weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and installed Catalina 10.15.5.

It turned out that SMB is working great for me. It keeps working after sleep etc... Last week I updated to 10.15.6 and everything is still working OK.

So while that worked out good for me, I wondered why it was working for me and not for others. I can think of this:

• I applied the workaround Cemento described before updating to Catalina. By the way my NAS always remains under 'Locations' and I also never get question marks.
• I have my iMac connected with a network cable (I do not use WiFi)
• I don't use Time Machine. But I do use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a daily backup to my NAS over the network, and that is working fine.

I thought I just share my experience, maybe it will help some others.