NAS Access in Catalina issues

If you use a router to connect to your NAS, give it a re-boot.

Also, and I don’t know why, but re-starting your Mac seems to help. Maybe it removes “previous attempt garbage”!

Finally, in Finder, make sure you are “connected to:” the default user name of the NAS (it’s probably “admin” like my EX4).

if you think this set-up works for you, the final test will be to see if it survives a re-start of your Mac.

Good luck and best regards,

OM2

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

I had everything working fine and in the last few weeks the usual issues had started resurrecting themselves. Most noticeable when running daily backups to a NAS using Carbon Copy Cloner. On the advice above I switched off WiFi on the machine and have used Ethernet only. All back working fine... I have always had Ethernet as the highest in the list of network connections but it seems something to do with connecting via WiFi as well cause the issues with the NAS connection. All back to stable again for now at least

Thanks for the feed-back.

Actually, I was referring to the NAS drive unit.

Apparently, your drive’s firmware may be missing something that allows MacOS Catalina to discover it.

Good-luck towards a permanent resolution.

best regards,

OM2

> I think it has nothing to do with the drive. It has to do with the OSX kernel. Somehow its letting

> its remotely mounted drive handles get corrupted.

It's certainly in some system library, but I'm not sure it's in the kernel, because when you mount the drive through Aperçu or PowerPoint -yes you can!- via File/Open..., it works beautifully like pre-Catalina: the NAS is discovered via Bonjour and the drive mounted without any issue.

My thinking: there are 2 "Finder" libraries in Catalina, one that is used by "older" applications, one that is used by the Finder app. The former works without any issues whilst the latter works only shortly after reboot.

Where I concur with you is that something at some point gets corrupted in the filesystem's internal data structures.

Thanks OM2 for detailed instruction, but it didn't solved the problem for me. I hope Apple will come with the solution really soon. Meanwhile I am forced to map each Synology shared separately using Command+K and afp://<synology_name>.local.

Did you change your NAS as well, so it will only support SMB3? This reconfigures your NAS to default to SMB3, not your Mac. I realize something fundamental changed, but this seems to have resolved the problem for my issue; and my experience was mirroring everyone else’s.

I also have the QNAP TS-231P. I don’t think the problem is specific to that model or even QNAP, I’ve seen similar issues described in other NAS brand forums including Synology.

Another symptom of Finder issues is when I try to put a folder from the NAS into my sidebar favorites in Finder, it shows up as ? instead of displaying the folder name.

***Not only Finder?**** It is possibly not only related to Finder. I run a software that backs up my iOS devices to the NAS. After the Catalina upgrade, I’m constantly getting errors like “folder not found”. The connections seem broken.

Apple needs to say something, at least acknowledge they know there is a problem. Right now many people are having issues but there is no solution is sight.

Hi Guys,

a long time ago already I pointed to my observation, that me - using a german AVM FRITZT!BOX as DHCP and local DNS - do not have the issue.

there are some changes in Finder and Preview. and propbably the way, BROADCASTS have change.

this change might point to some Routers handling this STILL OK, some not.

whe you can exchange / switch your machines to use the router working and then report success / failure, pls.

I'll probably get banned for saying this, but this issue has been known by Apple since at least September 2019. Could the reason they haven't fixed it in 8 months and several releases be because Apple feels that NAS devices compete with it's cloud-based storage services? After all, if we can't use our NAS reliably, then we can't leverage our own clouds, and will have to pay Apple to get more storage space on theirs.

Thanks @roken70, this is a very useful script. A couple of points below.

If fast user switching is on, the same share will be mounted under different names, such as "share" and "share-1", so you need a slightly different strategy to know if a share is already mounted. This is what I use (it's in Ruby - I've found it's easier to use than shell scripts even for simple tasks):

def mounted?
	`mount|fgrep -Ei '#{@smb_user}.+#{@smb_share}'` =~ /(\/Volumes\/[^ ]+)/
	$1
end

For mounting, you can bypass directory creation if you use mount and AppleScript. No need for sudo or find password:

def mount
	`osascript -e 'mount volume "smb://#{@smb_host}/#{@smb_share}"'`
end

mount unless mounted?

And I've personally switched to SMB since AFP has been deprecated a couple of releases ago.

@Mike_App, you need to get the folder on the desktop by mounting them with “Go > Connect to server...” in Finder. That pops up a list of shares on your folder to mount. That’s what you’ll drag to Favorites in Finder.

i also got the question mark right away before but I think it’s because I was trying to drag the folder from opening the NAS in “Locations”, not sure.

This has been working for me for a week without issue.

I did see the question mark at one point, but clicked on it and it name appeared (I think the drive remounted).

@Mike_App

I actually did not use the Go > Connect to server method of accessing the drives/shares, as that approach caused major issues for me previously. Instead I rebooted my computer, then went into Finder > Preferences > General > Show these items on the desktop, and checked Connected Servers (see screenshot.) Then I went into the sidebar in Finder, and under Locations, connected to my NAS. Once connected, the icons appeared automatically on my desktop, and I dragged them to the Favorites section of the Finder sidebar.

If you are seeing question marks, try rebooting your computer, and then follow the steps above. In my experience (and in the experience of several others in this thread), using the Go > Connect to server method eventually caused serious issues, especially after the computer and NAS were restarted.

PS. I have used this approach on two Macs on my network, and it is currently working.

Hi bsanders44,

Happy at least it's mitigating the pain.

But it's really sad that mother Apple is not willing to fix what clearly appears to be a trivial issue in Finder share management. There's must be a difference in what happens over the hood pushing on the network tab differently from pushing on the favorites one. Something that a SW engineer would fix in day. If only Apple would ask him to do. Really sad story from quality wise point of view.

Regarding the workaround: I can confirm that I'm using this workaround from months and a part from some question marks time-to-time I've never experienced Finder crash. Also TimeMachine is working fine.

@lexvo

I think the disconnect popup/dialog can appear legitimately if the device's network connection is lost. It's only on Catalina, so far, that I've seen it happen due to the underlying connection issue.

I suggest that everyone who is having success with Cemento's workaround go and mark his response as helpful, so it shows up first for users coming into this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250794335?answerId=252112800022#252112800022

Unfortunately, the IP address approach has also been marked as helpful, but doesn't work longterm for many people. Anyone who's marked that as helpful, but has had the issue recur, should go back and unmark it to avoid confusion.