Mac does not list all folders in a SMB share

Question

Mac does not list all folders in a SMB share

Hi guys, this is a bit of a weird one and I've tried everything I can think of.

In our house we have a media centre running Windows 7. It has several shares, one of which we'll call folder "X". Folder X opens correctly on the media centre, and any other Windows machine perfectly. Almost every other machine in the house is running OS X 10.6, and one of my housemates today noted that some of the folders inside of folder X were not listed on a Mac. So far we've tested it on 2 Macs and 2 Windows machines, and everytime the Windows machine lists all folders inside of X, where the Mac does not. The weird thing is, it's cutting them out alphabetically, so it's basically from D through to I that are missing, all in all there are 30 (out of 160) folders missing inside of Folder X...here's what I've tried.

On the Windows 7 machine:

-Restarted server service
-Removed Share X and re-added
-Checked share permissions on folder X
-Checked permissions on folder X, propagated to all child folders just in case.
-Restarted machine after every change.

On the Macs we haven't really tried much as there's not much we can think to change. We've tried Finder, Path Finder (which I'm guessing will be exactly the same), restarting, removing from workgroup and re-adding...I can't think what would cause such a weird problem.

To make things harder we don't know exactly when it started happening but the OSX machines definitely used to list the folders and it happens on more than one mac. which I guess makes me think it's something on the Windows client. The 30 folders are not using any nonstandard characters, some are only a few letters long.

Ideas on a postcard!?

Macbook/iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.6), Wired network

Posted on Mar 31, 2011 10:06 AM

Reply

Answer 1

satcomer

Level 4

1,575 points

Mar 31, 2011 3:38 PM in response to silver_haze20

Now how are you sharing on that windows 7 computer? I ask becase the Windows 7 "HomeGroup" ONLY works with other Windows 7 computers. It doesn't even work with XP computers. In the Windows 7 machine us the Advanced Sharing section describe in the blog post How to Share Windows 7 Files With OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard.

Plus avoid all the Timing errors between the two computers for sharing. Make sure both are using the same Time Server. In OS X it is in System Preferences->Date & Time.

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 31, 2011 4:02 PM in response to satcomer

Thanks for the reply. The media centre is definitely configured correctly with regards to sharing set up. We don't use the homegroup feature, and the workgroup is set on all the Macs, we use simple file sharing on the media centre, exactly as that guide describes.

On the media centre there are roughly 8 shares of which X is one, all the rest (and their subfolders) show correctly, and it's just the 30 folders in X from D-I which aren't showing ( if it makes a difference; the first D folder and the first I folder get listed on the Mac machines, just none in between).

The time I haven't checked, but password protected sharing along with encryption is completely disabled under Windows 7 sharing centre, so I don't see that it would affect simple file sharing, especially seeing as the majority are showing! But I'll be sure to check tomorrow. Any other suggestions in the meantime?

Reply

Answer 3

Apr 2, 2011 2:07 AM in response to silver_haze20

OK just to confirm the time is the same on both machines. I've checked everything I can, and we're now discovering instances of missing folders in other folders. So, we have a folder that utorrent downloads into (folder Y), we downloaded something new, and again on a mac that new download won't show, but the entire rest of folder Y lists correctly.

I'm at a loss, I think there must be something wrong with the media centre. Or we all updated our macs around the same time and it broke something.

I'll keep you posted if I find a solution

Reply

Answer 4

Xyhtac

Level 1

9 points

Apr 18, 2011 4:08 AM in response to silver_haze20

Reporting the same problem.

1. Have Windows 7 MediaCenter with file sharing set up properly (LM+NTLM Authentication allowed and 128-bit encryption disabled in security policies).

2. Test folder ("C:\income") and all the subfolders' owner is 'Guest', full access is granted for everyone.

3. Connecting to MediaCenter from MacBook with Finder by pressing Cmd+K and typing smb://ip-addr/income

4. Finder connects successfully, but some sub-folders and files are not being listed.

Workaround:

5. You can open a not-listed folder directly by pressing Cmd+K and typing smb://ip-addr/income/some-invisible-folder

6. Voila! You're inside invisible folder.

In the meantime, i can see all the sub-folders on a Windows XP client machine, so i can make a conclusion that all of these 'invisible' sub-folders are actually accessible by Finder, but in some reason are just not being listed on Mac.

Reply

Answer 5

Jun 8, 2011 1:56 PM in response to Xyhtac

Nice, just started investigating this again, found your response and gave it a bash and it worked. It's definitely a help so I gave you the reward! I really hope Apple sort this out, a few updates have passed now and still nothing has resolved it.

Reply

Answer 6

Xyhtac

Level 1

9 points

Mar 16, 2012 1:02 PM in response to silver_haze20

silver_haze20, thanks for the star! But it wasn't a final solution. Now I have one )

if you're still faced to this problem, you can apply a well-known automator script that makes Finder to show all the items everywhere regardless to visibility settings. Here's the script: http://www.brooksandrus.com/downloads/show_files.zip

Just download, unpack and apply it. Now you'll be able to see all system and hidden files on local or network disk.

Reply