Can no longer mount my smb share NAS on Catalina

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Level 1

8 points

Can no longer mount my smb share NAS on Catalina

I have an old ReadyNAS 1100 that has served me well for at least 10 years. It's worked flawlessly for me, and continues to do so for my PCs (win 7 and 10) and Linux (Centos 7) machines, not to mention my old 2011 Macbook with "High Sierra" (10.13.6) installed. Lastly, before upgrading this new MacBook Pro 2018 from Mojave to Catalina, being able to mount my NAS worked fine on this machine as well, just like all the other machines.

However, now after having upgraded the OS on the MacBook Pro to the latest Catalina (10.15.1)...

...When I go to mount my NAS now via the Finder "Go->Connect to Server...", and I select the share (smb://nas) it pops up the login window as usual, I enter the username, and I leave the password field blank (i.e. empty) as I've always done (because there IS NO PASSWORD set for the username) - and if I attempt to hit the "connect" button the popup window just does that little bounce-jiggle thing to indicate that what I did was unacceptable and it doesn't even try to connect! (Or maybe it does try to connect and this is its way of indicating an error?)

I contacted Apple support and went through several levels of help desk folks, and finally I was informed that they don't know how to fix this issue and that I need to contact Netgear to sort the problem out. Absurd.

They also suggested that the only other way for me to get help with my problem would be here. So when do we get our employee discounts! :-)

Anyway, there it is. I've tried the usual stuff as suggested in other threads, like typing in the IP directly (doesn't work) or using AFP (not an option on this old NAS).

I asked the help-person if there was some kind of command line way to connect to the server that might bypass a check for an empty password that might be going on in the pop-up window GUI and he didn't know and apparently couldn't find out.

I suppose I could try to add a password for the username but that will affect ALL my other machines and how they connect, I'm loath to do that with a system that has been working perfectly for 10 years.

Looking forward to any helpful hints! Thanks folks!

James.

MacBook Pro 15”, 10.15

Posted on Nov 21, 2019 8:42 AM

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Answer 1

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dot.com

Level 4

2,449 points

Nov 21, 2019 2:09 PM in response to jrowellfx

One of the things that I read during researching your question was that the one reason for dropping support of SMB v1 was the security, or rather insecurity of that version of SMB -- the wannacry hack from a couple of years ago was using SMB v1 as a vehicle for propagating itself -- see https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2017/05/smb-exploited-wannacry-use-of-eternalblue.html and Stop using SMB1 - Microsoft Tech Community - 425858 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com › Stop-using-SMB1 › ba-p

Perhaps your NAS vendor has an update you could install that allows more recent versions of SMB support?

Good luck...

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Answer 2

dot.com

Level 4

2,449 points

Nov 21, 2019 11:57 AM in response to jrowellfx

Well, I just look at the man page for mount_smbfs and it says to always use the "mount -t smbfs" form of mount command -- in fact, read the "man mount_smbfs" and take a look at it for yourself -- there is a couple of things you might try about the -N option (don't ask for password) and the use of ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf (do a "man nsmb.conf" for more info) and also there is a couple of e-mail addresses there that you might try and contact for more info - the man pages are dated 2003, so will be surprised if those e-mail addresses are still working but you never know.

If you have a "telnet" client, you might try to manually connect to the NAS on port 445 if you know what that involves.

Also, have you seen https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250714129?page=2 discussion (it's rather long unfortunately).

Good luck...

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Answer 3

jrowellfx Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 21, 2019 9:07 AM in response to dot.com

Thanks for the tip, I just tried it, unfortunately it didn't work.

myMachine:~ $ mount_smbfs //myUsrName@nas/media ~/nas/media
Password for nas: <I hit return here>
mount_smbfs: server rejected the connection: Authentication error
myMachine:~ $ ping nas 
PING nas (192.168.1.196): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.196: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.396 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.196: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.594 ms
^C
--- nas ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.396/0.495/0.594/0.099 ms

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Answer 4

dot.com

Level 4

2,449 points

Nov 21, 2019 12:58 PM in response to jrowellfx

Also, just read (at https://medium.com/@gobinathm/how-to-access-smb-printer-shares-in-macos-catalina-10-15-17ea91d2c10b ) that Catalina has disabled by default smb support -- you can create a /etc/nsmb.conf file and fill it with but not sure if it's talking about SMB client or SMB server or both:

[default]
port445=both

Good luck...

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Answer 5

dot.com

Level 4

2,449 points

Nov 21, 2019 1:01 PM in response to jrowellfx

I'm wondering what version of SMB your old NAS box is using -- try this on one of you other Mac systems that still work with the NAS device after mounting /Volumes/some-smb-volume:

smbutil statshares -m /Volumes/some-smb-volume

The output should include what version of SMB the NAS box and that Mac are using (I see a "SMB_VERSION" that is set to "SMB_3.02" when I tried this from one High Sierra system to another). What does it say for you?

Good luck...

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Answer 6

dot.com

Level 4

2,449 points

Nov 21, 2019 1:00 PM in response to Lurkums

I believe that will also work with the IP address as well as the name. Try the "Go" menu option in Finder and select "Connect to Server" then specify smb://192.168.0.1 (use the correct IP address).

Good luck...

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Answer 7

jrowellfx Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 21, 2019 1:35 PM in response to dot.com

Dot.com - you have been fabulously helpful, thank you SO MUCH for your valuable time. As I was combing through all those links that you supplied above, with me trying various options (all failed), it's pretty clear that the reason that I'm having issues (and won't be able to get a fix until Apple addresses this short-sighted decision) is because Catalina dropped support for SMBv1 and SMBv2. My ReadyNAS 1100 is so old that it's only SMB_1 (double checked via my old 2011 MacBook), and there's no option to use AFP on my NAS either.

So for now, I believe I'm sunk. It seems a shame that Apple has created so many issues with the release of Catalina (this isn't the only issue, but it's a big one plaguing lots of folks apparently). I really hope that Apple understands that just because we shell out big bucks for their boutique/nose-bleed laptops, cell-phones and tablets, doesn't mean we're rich and can afford to upgrade all our other old hardware just because they decided that they don't want to offer backward compatibility like the rest of the OS providers in the world.

Sigh. I'll read through those links again and see if I missed anything, but somehow I doubt it. Thanks again Dot.com, you rock!!! My love for Apple just dropped a notch. Bummer.

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Answer 8

jrowellfx Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 21, 2019 4:59 PM in response to dot.com

Dot.com - WE HAVE A WINNER! Thanks! :-) I found a firmware update for my netgear ReadyNAS 1100, that brought it forward quite a few versions. After updating it THEN trying to mount it through the finder but using "cifs://<<ipaddr>> it WORKED! Thank you thank you THANK YOU! I'm back in business. :-)

Cheers!

James

PS - It didn't update the NAS to a newer SMB, it's still SMB_1, but something else must have been improved that allowed that method of connecting with the "cifs" label to work as it should.

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Answer 9

dot.com

Level 4

2,449 points

Nov 22, 2019 9:49 AM in response to jrowellfx

What good news!!! Congratulations on sticking with it and getting things working!!!!

But, you really might want to consider a better solution to the SMB V1 -- this security loophole is not going away.

Good luck...

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Answer 10

Tesserax

Level 10

148,483 points

Nov 22, 2019 12:13 PM in response to dot.com

dot.com wrote:

One of the things that I read during researching your question was that the one reason for dropping support of SMB v1 was the security, or rather insecurity of that version of SMB

FWIW. Microsoft recommended (and subsequently disabled) the SMB1 protocol version, starting with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update around April 2018. Apple, on the other hand, continues to support SMB1 and is the only SMB version that their Time Capsule can recognize ... even with macOS Catalina. Doing a simple data capture would prove that out. Alternatively, you can use the smbutil statshares command in Terminal to verify the negotiated dialect. (The same command that you pointed out in an earlier reply to the OP.)

However, for other devices that require using SMB, Apple (since OS X Mavericks) supports the newer SMB versions. For example, my Synology NAS will negotiate a SMB 3.02 connection with my 2018 Mac mini (running macOS Catalina).

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