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 Alex Usov,

    Alex Usov Alex Usov Jan 27, 2016 12:03 PM in response to knob1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2016 12:03 PM in response to knob1

    Thanks! Resolved. Apple please fix

  • by BobHarris,

    BobHarris BobHarris Jan 27, 2016 12:37 PM in response to Alex Usov
    Level 6 (19,272 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 27, 2016 12:37 PM in response to Alex Usov

    Alex Usov wrote:

     

    Thanks! Resolved. Apple please fix

    Apple is not here.  This is a User-to-User forum

     

    I would encourage you to file a bug or feature enhancement with Apple at either:

     

    BugReporter

    <http://bugreporter.apple.com>

     

    Free ADC (Apple Developer Connection) account needed for BugReporter.

    Anyone can get a free account at:

    https://developer.apple.com/register/index.action

     

    And/Or

     

    The more people that report a problem, the more likely it will receive a higher priority.  Plus each report will have a different perspective that can help the developer identify the root cause.

  • by erswa79,

    erswa79 erswa79 Jan 28, 2016 12:30 AM in response to erswa79
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 28, 2016 12:30 AM in response to erswa79

    Actually, I thought this had fixed it but after an eventual reboot the problem returned.

     

    I have now permanently fixed the problem by:

    1. Forgetting all my wireless networks (eg deleting the stored password)

    2. Rebooting and performing an NVRAM reset.

    How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

     

    Not sure which of these (Or both) fixed it but it is working great now.

  • by Sue Holloway,

    Sue Holloway Sue Holloway Jan 29, 2016 5:18 PM in response to Billish
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Jan 29, 2016 5:18 PM in response to Billish

    For anyone that is still searching for an alternative to Finder because of SMB slowness, unfortunately development on mucommander has stopped and the last version requires Java 6 runtime, which is a major security hole. There is a mucommander clone, trolcommander, that works on El Cap and is very fast. I'm not the developer, just a grateful user. It's available at github; the developer's website is TrolSoft.ru.

  • by knob1,

    knob1 knob1 Feb 1, 2016 2:23 PM in response to BobHarris
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Feb 1, 2016 2:23 PM in response to BobHarris

    I filed a Bug report shortly after I posted my solution to the forum (November 26th).

    But up until now theres no response. Maybe with 10.12

  • by Perdignus,

    Perdignus Perdignus Feb 6, 2016 9:41 AM in response to Ronesy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 6, 2016 9:41 AM in response to Ronesy

    Thank you !  Your fix worked instantly.  I'm connecting to a Linux Samba share and it was horribly slow but your fix instantly made it snappy.

     

    echo "[default]" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf; echo "smb_neg=smb1_only" >> ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf

  • by cmtopinka,

    cmtopinka cmtopinka Mar 24, 2016 12:28 PM in response to knob1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 24, 2016 12:28 PM in response to knob1

    This resolved my problem. Thanks!

  • by bean_drew,

    bean_drew bean_drew Apr 1, 2016 7:03 PM in response to knob1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 1, 2016 7:03 PM in response to knob1

    Well I thought this had helped, but it seems not.

     

    The first time I unchecked the previews option from view options, my large network SMB share folder opened in a snap and I was glad.

     

    But subsequently, two things happen:

    1. Finder does not keep the view setting persistent on the drive when it is unmounted and mounted again.

    2. When I reset the previews option to off again, and attempt to reload the folder, it is again wretchedly slow to populate. That is to say after one positive result, I cannot duplicate the favourable outcome.

     

    So back to the drawing board go I.

  • by bean_drew,

    bean_drew bean_drew Apr 1, 2016 7:35 PM in response to bean_drew
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 1, 2016 7:35 PM in response to bean_drew

    Somehow I have been unable to edit my above post. I was editing in a proper edit window, but when I clicked to submit a red error bar popped up bottom of screen suggesting I might have been signed out, although I wasn't. Now there is no longer an edit option. Ok, here are my edits:

     

    Well I thought this [edit: this being the disabling of 'show icon preview' in folder view options] had helped, but it seems not.

     

    [edit: I also tried the Automator workflow to set the option across all folders on the drive - although I eventually quit that process after it started looking like it was going to take a long time]

     

    [edit: And I've tried the connection protocol and system default modification methods of utilizing SMB1 to no improvement. Neither has any good seemed to come from excluding the drive from Spotlight indexing or trying SMBUp or Finder alternatives. For whatever reason, Finder just takes an awful long time to populate a directory listing in crowded folders on my SMB network share, while my Windows partitions and iOs (3rd party app) media players cruise through them with no problem. I'm not sure what help it is to point out that once the directory has been brought up once, it generally seems to remain responsive until the next time I have to mount the drive. I've even scratched my head to wonder whether slow (relative to recent standards) transfer speeds of using USB2.0 to connect the device to a wireless-N router could have anything to do with it, but that's preposterous!]

     

    [edit.edit: and so for the sake of argument, can I edit this post? it appears so]

  • by Kiwiro,

    Kiwiro Kiwiro Apr 8, 2016 4:45 AM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 8, 2016 4:45 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

    Disabling the creation of .DS_Store files really sped up browsing my samba shares. This can be done at a Samba server level, or Mac Client level.

     

    Add or edit this line in the Samba config file (/etc/samba/smb.conf):

    veto files = /._*/.DS_Store/

     

    Client level, input this in terminal:

    defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores TRUE

  • by beachmat,

    beachmat beachmat Apr 11, 2016 7:47 AM in response to TenjuZenjin
    Level 1 (28 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Apr 11, 2016 7:47 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

    From what I can see, the problem originally raised in this thread (slow folder content listing in network shares over VPN) appears to have been fixed in the latest OS update (10.11.4 on the client without any change at the VPN server end).

  • by Kiwiro,

    Kiwiro Kiwiro Apr 11, 2016 8:26 AM in response to beachmat
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 11, 2016 8:26 AM in response to beachmat

    It improved, but it's not fixed. I've tested this on 2 macbook pros, one being brand new.

  • by beachmat,

    beachmat beachmat Apr 11, 2016 8:31 AM in response to Kiwiro
    Level 1 (28 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Apr 11, 2016 8:31 AM in response to Kiwiro

    For me it was night and day. On 10.10.5 it took around 1 min 30 to open a particular folder. Doing the same from 10.11.4 it was a few seconds. I checked it twice as I couldn't quite believe it.

  • by Kiwiro,

    Kiwiro Kiwiro Apr 12, 2016 8:03 AM in response to beachmat
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 12, 2016 8:03 AM in response to beachmat

    Today I've noticed something strange. My samba shares loaded slower than usual, so I checked the logs on the NAS. It showed that I was connecting with a user I logged in earlier today, even though I unmounted the shares and used smb://[new.username]:*@[IP_addr]/ to log in again. After a reboot, the logs no longer showed the old user and the shares loaded at their usual speed.

  • by jedi34567,

    jedi34567 jedi34567 Apr 19, 2016 11:10 AM in response to erswa79
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 19, 2016 11:10 AM in response to erswa79

    I went into Preferences->Networks and deleted WiFi, re-added it, re-connected and all of my samba connections suddenly started working at the normal speed.  Even in-progress video playing and command line copies speeded up over an order of magnitude.  I am on El Capitan and connecting to a Linux samba server. 

     

    Thanks!  I would never have suspected my wireless connection as the culprit.

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