Mac Server drops smb connections

Question

Mac Server drops smb connections

We have a small network of four client Macs and one server. All are running Catalina 10.15.3 except one of the clients which is running High Sierra. The server has the latest (rather minimal) version of Server software installed.

Three machines are connected via ethernet and the other is wifi.

Connections to the file server are not stable, we are using smb. Every so often the server connection freezes and may never re-connect or may take several minutes to reconnect.

Sometimes when manually reconnecting the process fails and the client machine will need a Finder restart or a complete machine restart.

In a busy studio this is becoming a real issue.

Thanks for yor help.

Posted on Feb 12, 2020 8:24 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 6, 2020 3:00 AM in response to Zackinthebox

Well things have improved significantly since changing the IPv6 settings. I can't quite guarantee that this was responsible for the improvement as we made several other changes at around the same time. Thank you for your help and lets hope Apple fix this issue soon.

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Answer 2

Feb 18, 2020 2:41 AM in response to Zackinthebox

Thank you @Zackinthebox, I had turned off packet signing which seemed to help but not eliminate the issue. I will report back on the IPv6 fix once some time has elapsed.

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Answer 3

Feb 17, 2020 7:42 PM in response to dyrckfromchristchurch

This is a known issue with SMB shares on Catalina since release, including 10.15.3. Some have reported changing your IPv6 to "Link-local Only" in System Preferences provides a band-aid over the issue until it's fixed. If you can downgrade to Mojave, you should be good.

You can also try disabling packet signing:

Turn off packet signing for SMB 2 and SMB 3 connections – Apple Support

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