Ventura 13.2 File Sharing broken

I just got off the phone with Apple. The fix I used was this:

1. Shut down the effected Mac mini that was being used as the file server (not running server software).
2. Restart.
3. Turned File Sharing 'Off' on the Mac mini that was sharing the files.
4. Quit system settings (SS).
5. Restart the Mac mini again.
6. Turned File Sharing back 'On'
7. Quit SS
8. Went to each of the other 3 iMac's needing to share those files, and then was able to reconnect to the Mac mini as we always did.

Now everything is working as it should (for the last couple hours I should say—so far, so good).

My environment: Mac mini M1 running macOs 13 and now 14

I tried all the tips listed here, none of them worked for me. It was very frustrated to see a feature I was relying on being broken on one system only and I wasted a lot of time trying to find a fix.

After updating to Sonoma yesterday, I was disappointed again to still get access denied while trying to connect via network file sharing...

So I spent more time online and finally found a post: Mounting SMB share on Monterey is rejected

with an answer from Ortwin Gentz which finally works for my network file sharing issue.

You need to add the user to the SMB service access control list (SACL) with this Apple Technote providing the details.

From Terminal, get the guid for the username:

   dscl /Search read /Users/<username> GeneratedUID

then add the user to the smb service with two commands:

   sudo dscl /Local/Default append Groups/com.apple.access_smb GroupMembership <username>

   sudo dscl /Local/Default append Groups/com.apple.access_smb GroupMembers <guid>

Et voila, network file sharing works again for my stubborn Mac mini M1. Don't ask me why I needed to do this manually, as mentioned by Ortwin, the Mac File Sharing window should do this automatically.

I hope this will work for you or maybe t least some of you, good luck.

My recommendation would be for everyone to give Apple Feedback on this directly by going to Product Feedback - Apple. Choose the Mac you're using, select the appropriate version of MacOs and let them know that these file sharing issues are affecting you. My hope is that the more people we have bringing this to their attention, the sooner it will get fixed. All I know is that file sharing is a basic function that had been working flawlessly in previous versions of MacOs, until Ventura happened.

Just to share what helped for me:

Symptom:

• No connection, always the "Beachball", no backups possible

Setup:

• Use Mini M1 as a server (with several external NVMe disks shared)
• Connection with several MBPs (all M1) - Use Carbon Copy Cloner for automated Backups
• All Ventura 13.2

First I tried to fix it with the solutions mentioned here

• Stop - reboot - start file sharing of M1 Server again -> not solved
• Eliminating custom icon on top-level -> not solved
• Tried to renew connection to the server via SMB://10.... (Server IP) -> not solved

Finally I remembered that I also have a Raspberry pi 4 which is connected via CIFS to the Mac mini (also for backing up files)

Then I tried to connect my MacBookPro with CIFS instead of SMB - I entered cifs://10..... (Server IP).

E voila since then it was possible to reconnect to the MacMini Server. I reconnected all laptops using cifs:// and the connection is up and running - I know cifs is more or less an outdated dialect of SMB - but hey, who cares. I was able to backup 45GB file via (Gigabit LAN) within 9 minutes, so performance seems OK.

Until then the system is up and running (since Sun., 5th) Don't know if "CIFS" was the key (or a combination of everything I tried), but it seems that this solves currently my situation until Apple will come up with an official solution.

I will observe it and give an update if something changes

Br

-T

Sorry to hear @sofalounge,

I can tell you it is still up an running sharing in ave. 2 TB of data per day.

Also via VPN and screensharing = no problem.

I have two shares:

• 1 x external 2TB NVMe (whole disk shared)
• 1 x Folder on a second external disk 2TB NVMe

I only removed one icon (the one of the disk) + off-on-restart file sharing + Cifs on client site.

That's all. The mac mini runs standard Ventura 13.2 no extras, tweaks etc. Good for me

Br

-T

Work-around:

(1) Look in the host Mac's System Settings > General > Sharing > File Sharing, with the setting turned ON, of course.

(2) Click the "i" information icon there. In the resulting pop-up window you should see something like "Other users can access shared folders on this computer...at smb://xx.xx.xx.xx" (where "xx.xx.xx.xx" os a specific address).

(3) On the guest Mac, open Safari and browse to that smb://xx.xx.xx.xx. You should get a dialog asking i it's OK to open Finder for that address.

(4) Do so!

Notes:

• File-sharing had been working OK for me with 13.2 on the host and 13.0 on the guest Mac. But as soon as I upgraded the guest to 13.2, file-sharing stopped working.
• I discovered this work-around while on a phone call to Apple Support, as the technician was investigating further.

• • After launching SSH for SFTP connections on the miniMac server (option = -> Settings -> General -> Sharing -> Remote Session), I connected with the client " FTP-Mounter ". I appreciate its function where links appear as mounted disks on the Desktop. Nonetheless, it was exceedingly slow. I tickled and worked the server side trying to improve the speed, but to no avail. Then, on a whim, I installed a new client : " CloudMounter ", with similar functions. Well, my problem was on the client side because now file transfers are blazingly fast with SFTP.

no, the command just whitelists smb

you can do this to disable the firewall entirely which I don't recommend:

sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --setglobalstate off

my problem with the firewall and it's ui after the Ventura install was:

• /usr/sbin/smbd is suddenly blocked
• deleting or unblocking it in the ui wasn't saved (shown as blocked again after reopening system settings)
• globally disabling the firewall did not really disable it. blocked applications still couldn't receive connections.

unblocking via cli did it as mentioned above. You really should do all the firewall settings with the cli right now.

The solution of turning file sharing off, rebooting, and turning it back on didn't work for me in Ventura 13.4 or 13.5. But this did:

• Open System Preferences
• Click Privacy & Security
• Click Full Disc Access
• Uncheck smbd
• Reboot

After reboot:

• Open System Preferences
• Click Privacy & Security
• Click Full Disc Access
• Check smbd

I have the similar issue on several Macs after upgrading to Ventura 13.2. I'm not using custom icons either. File sharing works for some Macs, but not for others. When it fails, the essentially hangs the computer that is trying to connect to a directory after establishing a connection with the other computer via "Connect to Server". The only way is to force restart the computer. I hope Apple will fix this bug soon.

You don't have to be "using" custom icons, they exist for many reasons. If you don't want to force restart the computer (not great for the disk), you can go to the computer acting as the server, turn off file sharing, and wait for a few minutes. The client will get kicked out. See the Reddit thread for more detail.

It depends on your needs. If your just looking to copy files to and fro, create an empty folder and share that. If you need to share some content, try to narrow down what your sharing to a sub-folder and be mindful of avoiding custom (hidden) icon files. (Again, see Reddit thread and my posts for additional detail how to identify the hidden custom folder/volume files in a directory path via Terminal.)

Thank you. As this problem took place 2 weeks ago, there was not yet enough information on the Web concerning it. I am not at home now, but before I left a few days ago, I quickly removed the custom icon on my "media" SSD attached to the mini-Mac. And... I saw my files! When I return home, I will do the same on my Time-Machine SSDs. Hopefully, I will be able to launch my first backups in 2 weeks.

Goes without saying that this is a major f..k-up on Apple's part... not even being able to do backups! Luckily I have a 2d set of backups off site. I usually put off major system updates (where the name changes) for about 6 months. But incremental updates should not be causing these sorts of problems. I may as well rent my Mac computers, because I sure don't own them anymore. It's all a part of some capitalist conspiracy.

I am curious to examine my SSDs attached to the mini-Mac using "Tinker Toy System" (Deutsch produkt) to look at ACL permissions. Perhaps the problem lies there. But in the short term, I just want my system to be functional again. With Ventura 13.1, everything was purring along like a kitten.

Since installing MacOs Ventura, I've had nothing but problems with file sharing between my Macs as well. I've never had a problem with file sharing between Macs on any previous operating system. It worked just fine on Monterey. Now We're on MacOs Ventura 13.2 and the problem still persists. I've called Apple Support about this and they don't seem to have an answer yet. I just hope it gets fixed soon. File sharing over your network is a basic function that has been in MacOs forever.