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Issues with Big Sur & NFS

I find that NFS is pretty unreliable under Big Sur. On several occasions, I've used Finder to copy files from an SMB share to an NFS share and the file transfers stall out and freeze. Has anyone else had similar issues? Can anyone speak to the level of support Macs have for NFS vs. SMB?

Mac mini, macOS 11.0

Posted on Nov 22, 2020 11:14 AM

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Posted on Dec 7, 2020 9:00 AM

DanieleCr,


Please contact Apple Support directly with this issue.


Be as explicit as possible that it is an engineering issue with Big Sur, and that you have diagnostic information and the aforementioned packet dumps.


Contact - Official Apple Support


Many of us do SMB transfers all the time, but there seems to be something about your configuration that exacerbates this particular issue, and of course Apple can't test every possible configuration.


In particular, your kernel panic points to an issue within a driver or the networking code somewhere where it is freeing memory but is retaining a reference to the freed memory and is improperly modifying the memory contents after having freed it.

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Question marked as Best reply

Dec 7, 2020 9:00 AM in response to DanieleCr

DanieleCr,


Please contact Apple Support directly with this issue.


Be as explicit as possible that it is an engineering issue with Big Sur, and that you have diagnostic information and the aforementioned packet dumps.


Contact - Official Apple Support


Many of us do SMB transfers all the time, but there seems to be something about your configuration that exacerbates this particular issue, and of course Apple can't test every possible configuration.


In particular, your kernel panic points to an issue within a driver or the networking code somewhere where it is freeing memory but is retaining a reference to the freed memory and is improperly modifying the memory contents after having freed it.

Nov 28, 2020 8:49 PM in response to thedust2010

UPDATE (11/28): I wiped the Mac Mini's hard drive and tried a clean install of Big Sur and I'm seeing the exact same behavior:

  • File transfers from one NFS share to another succeed at first but eventually stall out and hang indefinitely
  • Any attempt to stop the transfer results in the transfer hanging indefinitely with the status of "Stopping..."
  • A forced relaunch of Finder is unsuccessful and Finder can no longer be launched
  • A restart of the Mac hangs and requires a manual shut down


Nov 25, 2020 1:33 AM in response to thedust2010

I have issues with smb too; for only some files the transfer from the share to the mac hangs with error -8084 (or sometimes crashes with a kernel panic).

"Zone element 0xffffff9379469600 was modified after free for zone kext.kalloc.512: " "Expected element to be cleared"@/AppleInternal/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/xnu/xnu-7195.50.3.201.1/osfmk/kern/zalloc.c:1968


Smb server is linux with samba 4.13.2-1

Same files with the same server and same mac transfer with no issues on Catalina.

I'm having this issue since beta 7 (if I remember well) and it's here also in 11.1 beta 1.


I had to switch termporary to nfs which in my case is stable (nfs to local and local to nfs).


I have to stay with Catalina because of this issue.

Nov 28, 2020 9:22 AM in response to thedust2010

It's about a week later and I'm still struggling with this. I've tried re-installing Big Sur but it didn't help. Finder hangs when trying to do multiple file transfers to SMB or NFS shares. It seems like if I stick to one transfer at a time it's stable but if I push it and try to do 3 or 4 at once, Finder freezes up and can't be restarted. I have to physically shut down the Mac and start it up again. I'm wondering if a complete wipe of my drive and fresh install of Big Sur would make a difference?

Dec 7, 2020 8:56 AM in response to thedust2010

It's simply bugged!

Me too, I reinstalled the os several times during betas starting from a clean hd (always), hoping everytime that the issue was solved.

My issue may be different but I think it's related since my transfers hang too, but the os doesn't freeze.

It's simply unacceptable what Apple is doing, such basic features should be tested on the compatible hardware before releasing the os.

But hey! we have new emoticons and new icons! Simply crazy...


You know apple's mind, closed os, closed hardware, for sure smb/nfs will work good between macs (probably?).



[Edited by Moderator]

Dec 8, 2020 5:28 AM in response to Dogcow-Moof

Thanks William for your kind reply, I will try to get in contact directly with apple and see what we can do together.

Yes, the kernel panic points to com.apple.filesystems.smbfs, but as said I don't always have a kernel panic, only sometimes 1 time out of 50? Most of the time with the following configuration the error is -8084 (and that happens only for some files, always the same, and it doesn't matter the size of the problematic file, because I'm able to transfer other files, bigger or smaller in size, so it's very difficult to understand what is happening in the background).

For these problematic files, the usual behavior is always the same, the transfer seems to start, it stops at exactly 67,1 MB, then it hangs and the system throws -8084 error.

By forcing sync, it fails too, but the transfer hangs with the same error at a multiple of 67,1 MB (if I remember well at 134,2 MB)...very strange..

In Catalina latest stable all is working without issues.


I think I don't have any particular configuration, here is my samba.conf on the linux box:

[global]
access based share enum = yes
bind interfaces only = yes
interfaces = lo enp6s0

[2TB]
path = /media/2TB
browsable = yes
Force User = nobody
valid users = user1, user2
write list = user1, user2
vfs objects =

[6TB]
path = /media/6TB
browsable = yes
Force User = nobody
valid users = user1, user2
write list = user1, user2
vfs objects =

[VM]
path = /media/VM
browsable = yes
Force User = nobody
valid users = user1, user2
write list = user1, user2
vfs objects =

Dec 26, 2020 2:45 PM in response to thedust2010

I had this issue as well until I increased the rwsize to 65536 and it seems to go away. I also use async as it improve performance since I've encountered sync causing file transfer to freeze especially very large files.


The only problem I'm having is that Big Sur's Finder is reporting different available size on my NAS. My NAS have 8TB available space and Big Sur on my iMac is reporting 60M available. What's more strange is that my macbook with Catalina is reporting 8TB available space. Both iMac and macbook are using the same NFS configurations. I tried to turn off Spotlight and even tried to re-index to no avail. Are you seeing Finder misreporting the available space on your network drive?

Issues with Big Sur & NFS

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