SMB Service Crashing on Mountain Lion Server

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dazzamac Author

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SMB Service Crashing on Mountain Lion Server

Hi All,

Im having major problems with ML server at the college that I work at.

The server is joined to our AD domain and user login to the macs with their AD credentials.

Their home directories are hosted on a promise raid directly attaced to the server.

The macs are also in the AD domain and are using SMB for the user home directories ( couldnt get AFP to work)

The users can login fine and everything works great until the server crashes and all the macs freeze which seem to happen at random times sometimes every half a day sometimes every couple of days.

The only way to bring the server back online is to turn it off and on again.

When it reboots everything looks to be ok server side but the Mounatin Lion clients cant login, Snowleopard Clients cna login fine,

When an ML clent tries to login they get the "you are unable to login to the user account at this time" error.

I can sometimes get it working again by starting and stopping the OD and File Sharing service and restarting the smb service or reapplying the Certificate but sometimes I cant't and it takes hours to get it back online.

The OS version is 10.8.5. Server App 2.2.1

Any ideas would be much apprecitated.

Regards.

Darren.

Posted on Sep 26, 2013 1:53 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 2, 2013 9:22 AM in response to dazzamac

I had the same issue. I ended up oging to the Active Directory and unbinding the Mac from AD, restarting the mac, then binding to AD restart again and all was fine.

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Answer 2

dazzamac Author

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Oct 3, 2013 1:13 AM in response to robfromupland

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Do you been unbind the Server or the clients?

I've got 1 Xserve and 200+ Client macs so I hope you mean the server!

Regards

Darren.

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Answer 3

Oct 3, 2013 9:51 AM in response to dazzamac

Yes, I unbound from the AD server, then re-bound to the AD server. I did not make any changes to the client macs. Sorry, I should have been more specific.

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Answer 4

dazzamac Author

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Oct 4, 2013 1:01 AM in response to robfromupland

I'll give the unbind and rebind a try later.

But I think the problem is down to the number of connections. We have close to 600 AFP and SMB connections in file sharing and I think its just too much for the Sever software to cope with or maybe it doesn't like mixing protocols.

Do your clients map a network home directory to the server or just use a local/mobile home?

Thanks for your help

Dkelly

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Answer 5

Oct 4, 2013 9:02 AM in response to dazzamac

We use Active Directory which creates a home directory on a MacPro Server. The actual iMacs do not store any user files, only applications. We have only 38 Macs on the network as well as hundreds of PC's.

I am a computer elective teacher at a middle school, not a networking expert, but am getting better each day through lots of trial and error. I have been running my classroom with iMacs on the Active Directory for 6 years now, and have learned quite a bit.

Hope this helps you out somewhat,

Rob

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Answer 6

Oct 6, 2013 11:37 PM in response to dazzamac

Curously, we had the same ""you are unable to login to the user account at this time" error only because the firewall pushed the DNS IP but not the DNS search domain (abcd.local) in the System Settings / Network / Wireless panel / Advanced / DNS .. on OSX ML clients....

Hope it's only that for you too.

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Answer 7

dazzamac Author

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Oct 7, 2013 2:27 AM in response to robfromupland

Hi Rob,

Do the macs get their home directories over AFP or SMB?

I could'nt get the logins to work with AFP so had to use SMB and this is the thing that crashes when the connections get into the hundreds.

Do your PC's get a home directory or map the users home folder from the Mac server too?

Are you using Mountan Lion Server?

Sounds like your setup is similar to ours on a smaller scale.

Thanks for your help.

Darren.

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Answer 8

Oct 8, 2013 12:54 PM in response to dazzamac

Hi Darren,

I'm not sure about the amount of users that would cause connections as we have less than 40 at any one time.

The Users that are created in Active Directory get a home directory on a MacPro Server that is mapped to that computer. We have a user template set up that creates the path in AD. I then have to allow permissions for the Groups to access the home folders.

We are using a MacPro as the server running OSX 10.8.5 and the Server app 2.2.2

Hope this helps,

Rob

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