NAS Access in Catalina issues

New to this party.

I am also strugling with folders on my Synology NAS en Time Machine backups to both NAS and USB drives on Catalina 10.15.5. Before 10.15.5 everything was working fine, from iMac 2017.

From various reports it seems that Apple has strengthened network security in Catalina, for instance disabling Netbios and SMB v1. This may wel explain the experiences we now have.

There is mention of a fix (or workaround) on the site Reduser.net by Bob Zelin (thanks a lot, Bob; by the way this site has more valuable knowledge and insights):

"This is how to resolve the Catalina "disconnecting" issue from NAS systems. This has nothing to do with QNAP, or Synology or any other brand. This is an Apple issue, and this is the fix. 

This fix was written by Apple, but it is "hidden" and their own tech support doesn't seem to know it. (crazy - right ?). 

this is as of 5/21/2020. I have verified that this works with multiple clients for the past 30 days. 

On the Mac running macOS 10.15 - open terminal and type this in

nvram boot-args

you will get an error message

now, copy and paste the line below, and put this into terminal, and hit return - it will ask for your password - you will not see anything when you type in your password

sudo nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | cut -f 2-)"

now, once again, type in nvram boot-args

you will now see this - 

boot-args. serverprefmode=1

reboot your Mac. 

You will no longer get disconnects

Bob Zelin"

I have tried this fix an it made my Synology NAS operational again. Time machine on the NAS is working again. Albeit that my TM backup history was completely lost, because of restart of the TM trail. It may help others as well.

The lack of communication on the applied network security changes in 10.15.5 by Apple is a bit disappointing to me. I use this iMac professionally and the experienced loss of productivity en subsequent trouble shooting has taken quite some time. A little more communication and support would have been appreciated.

Hope this helps.

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.

I actually started using "autofs" to fix this as suggested by "bitonio" a few replies away on this thread. I'm using this approach since a longer time on my stationary old Mac Mini which runs High Sierra and did not know that this would fix the problem with shares on my MacBook running Catalina. The additional advantage of this solution is that you also get a permanent mount point which is filled with mounted shares on each start or wakeup. This is basically the same as known on Linux and Windows since a longer time. "autofs" is a standard tool from Apple, whereas I'm not sure if using the approach with "nvram boot-args" is rather closer to an insider hack which is certainly cool, but can stop working after the next security update. I became very cautious with these things since they tend to cost a lot of time to maintain in the future. I prefer more using my system and less maintaining it ;-) But the latter is my personal perspective. The bottom line is using "autofs" is very convenient and solves the problem. I hope someone from Apple is reading this thread as well and the will try to fix this to keep on the "out of the box" user experience ;-)

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!

if by solved you mean a patch in Catalina that fixes the finder NAS disconnection issues, no, it is not solved.

There some workarounds that work for most people like dragging mounted folders in favorites accessing from there. But those are workarounds.

There are also different issues in this thread. Most are just disconnections to the NAS when browsing shares with Finder but some experience TimeMachine disconnects as well. I think that’s a different issue.

One person has left cryptic messages that the next version of MacOS (which isn’t released officially yet) doesn’t have that issue, but that does NOT solve the *Catalina* issue.

Long answer short is: no, it hasn’t been solved, not by Apple anyway. Only possible workarounds.

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.

@Fly_PetitPrince

The Synology NAS is connected by its IP-adress in Finder (GO - Connect to server).

The Time Machine share was dragged to the Finder left column.

I also implemented a Automount app (ConnectMeNow, it is in Dutch), but that does not seem to help very much. If Time Machine is launched, it opens the share directly.

After applying this, I have not had the horrible message above that the TM bundle is corrupted, for more than 1 week now. (always nice to see this in French also...., misere international, non?)

For the sake of reliability, TM is also making a backup on a local USB-drive.

Hope this will help you as well.

Cheers,

Martin

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

Well, at least for me, it does not work, TM is still sending error when completing the check (1st TM is ok, but not the check...).

As per the node, it looks like so far I can access them, but usually the problem occurs after several days, and if TM is not solved, I am afraid that it will be the same with access to folders.

Let's cross finger and let's see...

Fly

Hi there,

Just my feedback as well, since 10.15.6, I do not have anymore the issue with connecting to the Synology NAS and no more disconnection so far. All Fine.

As for the Time Machine weird message I had "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability Time Machine must complete a new backup for you.", it's linked to a recent Norton Security update (I had no problem so far, and suddenly experiences the issue). As explained here: https://community.norton.com/en/forums/norton-security-857-broke-time-machine-backup

Fly