TenjuZenjin

Q: AFP/SMB Directory Listings very slow in Finder

Hello comunity!

 

Since the upgrade to OS X Mavericks we are experiencing server problems, browsing AFP/SMB shares on remote servers (VPN). The Directory Listing is very slow an can take up to 30 minutes for large listings.

 

Here's the setup

 

  • 2 networks are connected thanks to a VPN connection.
  • All clients, in all connected networks can communicate to a common fileserver (MacPro with OS X 10.6 SnowLeopard Server) in Network A
  • Firewall is not an issue between those networks
  • The fileserver also has other network services set up (DNS, Mailserver, SMB, AFP, Firewall, ...)
  • The clients authenticate via OpenDirectory and Kerberos to the fileserver

 

So the problems occur if i want to connect a client on network B to the server on network A. Connection, authentication, ... all good. Even the performance over the VPN, to tranfer files is OK. But browsing subfolders is catastrophic. I used AFP and SMB alike, results are the same.

 

I also made tests on older clients, to see if the fileserver is the problem. 10.6 and 10.8 clients can browse normally, speed is OK. Even Windows Clients can browse normally all the subfolders of the fileserver.

 

I analyzed different approaches made here, but none of them worked:

  • Connect to share with explicit port
  • Connect to share with FQDN
  • Connect to share with port 445 (SMB)
  • Setup an nsmb.conf with notify_off=yes
  • ...

 

I also did analyze different logs and there's something i found, but can not say if it's connected. I did see many log entries like this:

...

29.10.13 12:21:51,960 icbaccountsd[775]: -[ICBLocalDictionary writeLocalMapping:]: Status: Writing out local mapping to disk

29.10.13 12:21:51,960 icbaccountsd[775]: -[ICBLocalDictionary writeLocalMapping:]: Status: Ending writing out local mapping to disk

29.10.13 12:21:51,960 icbaccountsd[775]: -[ICBRemoteDictionary writeDevices]: Status: Writing out of devices

29.10.13 12:21:51,960 icbaccountsd[775]: -[ICBRemoteDictionary writeDevices]: Status: Ending writing out of device

...

 

I also saw tha a process "icbaccountsd" was often coming up an using all of my CPU, when i start browsing the share. Thus i could not find any documentation on it.

 

So my question: What can I do to accelerate the browsing of my AFP/SMB shares for all my Mavericks clients? What can I do to speed up the Directory Listing? And yes: i know about solutions like PathFinder, TotalFinder, .... but i'm more interested in a native solution to this problem.

 

Thx!!

OS X Mavericks (10.9), 10.6.8 Server

Posted on Oct 29, 2013 4:33 AM

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Q: AFP/SMB Directory Listings very slow in Finder

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  • by aerolito,

    aerolito aerolito Mar 15, 2015 5:04 AM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 15, 2015 5:04 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

    Hi everyone.

     

    I dont know if this may help, but this was our experience with AFP navigation in Mavericks and Yosemite.

     

    We had the same problem in my work. Accessing by wifi to an AFP server was a nightmare but through Ethernet works fine.

    after researching for a long time, we discovered that the problem was the WIFI encryption.

    WPA/PSK are icompatible and gives much troubles with Mac OSX, now with WEP password all runs wery well.

     

    Sorry for my english.

     

    I hope that it will help us.


    Regards

  • by BobHarris,

    BobHarris BobHarris Mar 15, 2015 9:04 AM in response to aerolito
    Level 6 (19,272 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 15, 2015 9:04 AM in response to aerolito
    ...now with WEP password all runs wery well.

    Just be aware that a WEP password can be broken in less than a minute.

     

    Basically WEP will keep honest people from accidentally connecting to your WiFi.

     

    However, anyone that wants to access your WiFi network to capture your traffic, or just to use your broadband connection for free can easily do this will tools easily obtained on the internet.

     

    As long as you know and understand this, WEP is fine.  Like I said it is useful in keeping neighbors that do not want to accidentally connect to your network from having their computers connect anyway.

  • by BayonConsultants,

    BayonConsultants BayonConsultants Apr 4, 2015 3:13 PM in response to BobHarris
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 4, 2015 3:13 PM in response to BobHarris

    This has been a constant problem for me and a handful of clients ever since Mavericks. I thought that Yosemite would have fixed it, but I still have a client who suffers from it. AFP or SMB both work really great on the LAN, but connecting through VPN it is very slow to load folder contents. I know it is not a problem with the VPN because when I connect from iOS and use iFiles to browse AFP, every folder loads lightning fast.

     

    In the effort to try something else, I turned on FTP sharing in OS X Server and the difference was night and day. Folders with many items were displaying in Finder noticeably faster than with AFP/SMB2/SMB3. It doesn't solve the issue with AFP/SMB, but it's a workable solution. I have also confirmed FTP being faster with another colleague of mine who ran a test on his client's OS X Server (Yosemite) and FTP was a night and day difference.

     

    For now, FTP access will be my solution for slow remote file server access when using AFP/SMB.

  • by ibisiki,

    ibisiki ibisiki Apr 10, 2015 6:44 PM in response to Zamees
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 10, 2015 6:44 PM in response to Zamees

    thanks meng, been fighting with this and my router and firewalls for a while now!

  • by ictusletalis,

    ictusletalis ictusletalis May 6, 2015 8:52 PM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 6, 2015 8:52 PM in response to TenjuZenjin

    Same problem here. Apple needs to address this issue ASAP.

  • by huusken,

    huusken huusken May 10, 2015 2:36 AM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 10, 2015 2:36 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

    I had the same problem with my new Macbook Pro running Yosemite (very slow listing of directories, especially with large amount of files in it), tried several things mentioned on this forum and others, including editing nsmb.conf, switching to smb1 etc, nothing worked. Eventually I set all the permissions straight on my NAS for all folders and subfolders. This solved it for me! Now browsing my QNAP shares is blazing fast again.

  • by Nawyecky,

    Nawyecky Nawyecky Jun 9, 2015 9:47 AM in response to huusken
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jun 9, 2015 9:47 AM in response to huusken

    Could you please describe the steps you followed with this method? Thanks.

  • by Zamees,

    Zamees Zamees Aug 2, 2015 12:37 AM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 2, 2015 12:37 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

    No fixes in El Capitan.

    My experience:

    Upgrade from Mountain Lion to Mavericks, super slow NAS.

    Clean install back to Mountain Lion, blazing fast NAS

    Re-ugrade to Mavericks, super slow

    Upgrade to Yosemite, super slow

    Upgrade to El Capitan, super slow

     

    The only variable here is upgrading the OS.

    Apple, can't you fix this. Used to see 30-50MB/s file transfer, now it's 2-5MB/s

  • by BMOCroc,

    BMOCroc BMOCroc Aug 4, 2015 7:15 PM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 4, 2015 7:15 PM in response to TenjuZenjin

    agree with Mountain Lion working and anthing higher doesn't....

    none of the suggested fixes worked for me either

  • by Brezka21,

    Brezka21 Brezka21 Sep 19, 2015 2:14 AM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 19, 2015 2:14 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

    I have the same and just wold like to ask after some time if someone find solution in yosemite 10.10.5.

     

    It is impossible to work on NAS when you are connected via PPTP VPN. I really spend on this issue many days but can't find solution. Nothing from this post work for me.

     

    All other devices (iOS, Linux, Windows, Android) works amazing fast on same network and same VPN settings. Just only Mac is SOOO SUPER SLOW!

     

    How do you fix it or are you all switch to windows when you are working outside of LAN? Any chance in OX X El Capitan?

  • by beachmat,

    beachmat beachmat Sep 28, 2015 8:59 AM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (28 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Sep 28, 2015 8:59 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

    After reading this thread it seems to me the well-known SMB problems in the Mac OS since 10.7 have actually obscured the original question, which was to do with slow folder access in Mavericks over VPN. We have VPN running on OS 10.9.5, Server 3.2.2. If you do a VPN connection from a Mac running 10.8, then connect via AFP to a shared folder, then open folders contained within it, the contents show quickly. If you connect from a Mac running 10.9 or 10.10 the contents of the contained folders are very very slow to show (but the top listing of folders is fine). So no SMB involved. As suggested it seems to be down to a change in the Finder from 10.9. I've tried Pathfinder as well and accessing the same folders over VPN is instantaneous.

  • by jmdeike,

    jmdeike jmdeike Oct 13, 2015 1:51 PM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 13, 2015 1:51 PM in response to TenjuZenjin

    I've read through this thread in hopes that someone would cover "searching" SMB shares on a Windows server.  We are having issues when trying to search.  The speed itself of navigating the shares is fast enough, but trying to search is basically nonexistent due to how slow it is.

     

    I've added the Volume as a spotlight index via the mdutil terminal command.  That has allowed for some searching, but does not function as a true search, as it won't find certain things (Folders, files, etc)  I'm not sure if it's still indexing (nothing going on via the spotlight icon) or what if it's doing anything.

     

    Anyone have similar issues, or experiences?

     

    Thanks,

     

    Jason

  • by tekwerxIT,

    tekwerxIT tekwerxIT Oct 13, 2015 2:13 PM in response to jmdeike
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 13, 2015 2:13 PM in response to jmdeike

    Unless something has changed in 10.11 that I am not aware of, you can only do file name searching of network shares, not content searching, which may be why you have limited results. Spotlight is only supported on AFP shares, or network shares from a Mac server. Since Windows servers do not use Spotlight indexing, you rarely get dependable searching. If you use a Windows server, try Extreme Z-IP to create AFP shares on your server for full Spotlight indexing.

  • by jmdeike,

    jmdeike jmdeike Oct 13, 2015 2:20 PM in response to tekwerxIT
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 13, 2015 2:20 PM in response to tekwerxIT

    Thank you, that is what I was afraid of but wasn't able to confirm from the searches I've done.

  • by No_Spin_Zone,

    No_Spin_Zone No_Spin_Zone Nov 9, 2015 9:52 PM in response to jmdeike
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 9, 2015 9:52 PM in response to jmdeike

    Apple believes that Mac users only need to search Mac formatted drives that are directly connected to a Mac.

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