Ventura 13.2 File Sharing broken

I found out that the sharing works well for drives that are externally connected to the computer that is sharing the files. Thus, the sharing issues appears to be specific to the internal drive that the operating system is installed. My internal drive uses APFS whereas the external drives (all SSDs) use Max OS Extended (Journaled). Hope this is helpful.

I don’t suspect it is the file system format but rather a typical difference in internal vs external disks and permissions. Do you have “ignore permissions” enabled on your mounted external drives? (I believe that is the default.) If so, I think you are on to what I’ve been wanting to look at but haven’t had the time— that it may be the permissions on custom icon files that are at the heart of this issue. I’m suspecting Apple made a change to their filesharing/SMB implementation to address a security concern and overlooked something in the process of that change. (Which isn’t an excuse but an explanation.)

Does the unchecked drive potentially have no custom icon files? (See my reddit post on how to search a Volume for them if unaware.)

Also, are both Macs sharing the external volumes running 13.2? And intel or apple silicon models? (I currently don’t suspect the hardware is related but trying to look at all of the data.)

BTW, I’m genuinely interested in your responses, not asking just to “prove” something I already know.

I've also had this method work for me temporarily. But it's probably going to be short lived. I bet when you restart your Mac Mini, it will break the file sharing and you'll have to repeat the same steps again. I think this is more of a workaround and less of a actual solution.

I'm finding a lot of folks confused by this. Removing one custom icon is not a fix, you would have to remove every single one of them from the Volume or folder hierarchy being shared. If the top of your share has no custom icons, the sharing will appear to work. The moment you go to a sub-folder or anything that triggers the file sharing process to index the shared resource, it will stop working.

For the sake of potentially helping others, I'll keep mentioning the best bet at the moment is to create an empty folder on the host and share only that to the client to facilitate basic file exchange until Apple provides a fix.

I just ran this command on the external drive with "ignore ownership on this volume" unchecked. There are many icons, but the sharing works just fine with Ventura 13.2. So the icons alone cannot be the reason for the sharing problems.

Thanks for sharing your testing results. To clarify one point, without an Apple engineering team level of insight into the issue, the community is left to a much higher level of trial and error testing to look for a common cause and possible work-around(s). Your test is showing that one theory I had expressed-- that the problem with custom icons is potentially permissions based, to be not unequivocally true. However, it's not disproving that custom icons themselves are not still a part (or at the heart) of the matter. A lot of other testing is proving that to appear likely, despite some people's confusion that restarting or just removing some but not all custom icons, etc. appears to address the issue and then reporting that fix was "temporary". The devil is very much in the details and users on these and other public forums such as reddit have pretty significantly different levels of technical and diagnostic experience.

There is always the additional possibility that there is actually more than one problem happening releated to sharing and no one has quite put their finger on the differences. All in all, it's just the community of Apple users identifying a generalized common problem and possible workaround(s).

MiniMac used for file sharing, media server and TM backups. File sharing and TM were completely inoperative with Ventura 13.2. Thanks to this forum, I read that the issue may be (bizarrely) the customized icon. This has turned out to be my case, as all functionality has returned. Albeit, the TM links were completely broken and not so easy to repair. Go figger!

I am going to experiment with a USB drive on the miniMac using TinkerTool System. I hope to investigate what might be the cause of this disfunction.

After removing custom icons, file sharing seemed work, until it did not. Disconnecting shared volumes provokes the bouncing beachball of death. I have to reboot the miniMac server and my macBook just to get things working again. Sometimes even the Finder process ceases to run and cannot be relaunched through the Terminal. All in all, Ventura 13.2 is severely dysfunctional regarding file sharing. I looked at permissions (ALC) and could find no issues to speak of. Media sharing and Time Machine seem to operate without issues. I remind readers that up to and including Ventura 13.1, everything was purring along quite nicely.

Nonetheless, I will be downgrading to Monterey. I will not be going back to Ventura for quite a while. After 30 years in the computer business, I have never experienced such a bad upgrade as Ventura 13.2.

No clue. I'm getting the feeling that this file sharing issue isn't a main priority for Apple. I had an open case with Apple Care regarding File Sharing not working in Ventura. I called in late December of 2022. I checked in a few weeks later because I hadn't heard anything back. Apple Care's reply email simply stated "Thanks for reaching out to me. As we discussed, I’m looking into your case and working on your request."

I just looked at my case information again today, and I'm not able to reply to the case or respond to the person I had been talking to regarding the case. I'm not happy about it. Ventura has been the worst MacOs experience I've had in years. Monterey was much more stable.

My system now works perfectly !! I have one macBook M1, one iMac M1, and the miniMac M1 which acts as a file, media and backup server. I DOWNGRADED to Monterey 12.6.2, but only on the miniMac server. The macBook and iMac remain on Ventura 13.2. I booted the miniMac into recovery and erased the disc. The next step allowed me to reinstall Monterey, the OS with which it was delivered. After that, I recovered apps, settings and files from the last backup made just prior to installing Ventura 13.2, therefore under Ventura 13.1. With a bit of futzing and multiple reboots, it all came out OK. The only real problem was with the media libraries : Music & TV. The library catalogues have to be recreated under Monterey, as the OS will not read the catalogues created under Ventura. Once a new library (ie. catalogue) is created, then a massive import of the media allows Music & TV to repopulate the new library. Now my appleTV is functioning as before; file sharing and TM backups also. Lesson to be learned: I will not be upgrading my miniMac any time this century. As we say here sometimes: "If it's not broke, don't fix it".

I had to add an additional step to the procedure you (wicker) detail, and that was to wait 15 hours. I was very frustrated with a refurb-but-new-to-me M1 Mini and new M2 MacBook Air. I went to bed very frustrated, but the next afternoon everything was working well, bi-directional file sharing from internal or external volumes.

Unfortunately that didn't work for me. Have deleted all custom icons, tried it with smb and with cifs. There's nothing else shared then the folders.

Really hope for an emergency fix. But I'm afraid apple will take their time and at best it will be fixed with version 13.3 😨

Found another "Fix"

at reddit I found another link for a "Fix" or "Two".

FIX 1: Let OS Auto Switch between SMB 2 & 3

FIX 2: Force Switch to SMB 3

Check it out... didn't try it cause my system is already "stable"

https://www.droidwin.com/smb-file-share-not-working-in-macos-ventura-fix/

Br

-T

We are having the same issue, calls to Apple's upper support seems to fall on deaf ears. I hope when it is fixed they let us know (either by some background OS update) or detail it having been fixed in version 13.3. Our solution has been to install the external shared drive to a Mac running an old OS. So now our Thunderbolt 4 RAID is running at Thunderbolt 2 speeds over the network through a 2013 iMac. The days just go longer.

Apple really needs to make an easy way to drop back an .* OS version when an update breaks something.