Server File Sharing unstable on mac and windows network on Mavericks and OSX Server 3.0

That sounds great! 🙂

Anybody else that has tried filesharing on a Yosemite server in a mixed OSX/Windows 7 clients environment yet?

I upgraded our office server (a Mini) to Yosemite/Server 4.0 last night. We're running a mix of about two dozen clients on a mix of 10.9, 10.6, and Win7. We were having a few nagging Windows glitches with 10.9 server, although the most severe problem I've been dealing with is actually with a 10.9 client that is reliably failing to save any Office document opened directly from the server (and for bonus mass-havoc points, Office also deletes the original).

In any case, the upgrade was quite smooth--the install was almost entirely hands-off, everything imported correctly (didn't even have to re-configure printers), and most of the users didn't even notice the difference.

The only glitch so far has been that a few of the Windows clients were unable to log in (they would get a "bad login" error even with good credentials). Turned out that they for some reason had a less-strict registry setting (HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\lsa\LmCompatibilityLevel = 1) that was allowing the use of NTLM (rather than forcing NTLMv2; setting 3), which was the cause of the error. Took a while to track that down, but the fix was easy once discovered--either delete the key (it defaults to 3 on Win7) or set it to "3".

With that fixed, at least so far everything is working (though it has not fixed the Mac client chewing up Office files--we'll see if Yosemite on that end does). I'll reserve judgement on overall stability, and we'll see whether it's cleared up some of the more annoying Windows glitches, but so far so good.

So I upgraded from OS X 10.9 to OS X 10.10 and then upgraded the server to server 4. Result - after initial upgrade my Open Directory master didn't show in the list! I had to restore it from an older time machine backup via command line. After that I had an issue where my local admin user would only get a black screen with a mouse pointer. So I restarted from recovery and did a OS reinstall right over it. After the reinstall was finished I launched server 4 and it said that it had to import settings again. After bout 1/2 hour of nail biting Server 4 came online with OD in working. Luckily the two clients I upgraded to 10.10 didn't have any upgrade issues.

Anyway, things are working and my Windows 8.1 clients can connect fine to file sharing, and my OS X 10.10 clients can connect fine as well. BUT ... yes, there is a big but.

The computer names for server and client keep changing even if they just sit there idle! Example, my server name is called 'macmini' and it can be accessed locally with 'macmini.local'. But it changes without notice to 'macmini (2)' but at the same time it is accessible locally as 'macmini-3.local'. And that number seems to change ever so often. This impacts how the server shows up in the clients finder side bar under Shared as well! There are multiple copies of the server, all with different numbers, etc. Really crazy. I am running iTunes on my server where I manage all my iOS devices from. It makes iTunes Wifi sync originated from iOS clients impossible. Luckily I can still initiate a iTunes Wifi sync from within iTunes (without the iOS devices being plugged in). But it's a bit frustrating. Stuff that worked flawlessly for me under 10.9 and server 3 (at least in the last few versions that came out) is now buggy. For me upgrading the server to 10.10 and Server 4 seems a step back and I am contemplating going back to 10.9 and Server 3 .. for the server anyway.

Hope that helps,

MRL

Thanks for your info... this does not sound promising at all... 😟

I just removed my triggerfinger from the "buy apple products" button...

As mentioned before I have been running Yosemite/Server 4.0 for a few weeks and it seemed to have solved all our issues ( Server 3.0 was just not reliable and would create issues when used with Windows 7 machines)

All those issues seem to be resolved now ..= We are very happy with server 4.0 !

I have not been able to connect to the server with older Windows XP machines (Server would not accept the credentials) ,

but this didn't bother me much as

A) it's only my developing computer that's running XP

B) I knew somebody smarter then me would figure this out for "us"- sounds like Marc Marshall just did :-)

Also my upgrade when without a hitch ....but I'm always careful to upgrade ALL the other items first before doing a mayor upgrade - even garage band..:-) and run the repair permissions first.....

Our server Hardware: MacMini Late 2013

JorgeUSA wrote:

I have not been able to connect to the server with older Windows XP machines (Server would not accept the credentials) ,

but this didn't bother me much as

A) it's only my developing computer that's running XP

B) I knew somebody smarter then me would figure this out for "us"- sounds like Marc Marshall just did :-)

As you said in B, it is pretty much guaranteed to be that registry setting I mentioned. While Windows 7 defaults to 3, which works (so it will only have problems if it has been overridden and set to 1 or 0), XP defaults to 0, so it is guaranteed not to work unless you override the setting and push it up to 3. The key probably doesn't exist at all by default, so you'll have to add it manually if it's not there (it's a DWORD).

If anyone is curious, here's a MS Technet article that explains more about the specifics and key, and here's a topic I posted and then answered my own question in that has a little more info and explanation of the issue: Some Windows 7 computers cannot log in to Yosemite Server regardless of user

On an unrelated note, my Windows users have thus far not had any problems saving Office documents, so Yosemite is looking promising for resolving the issues we were having. That 10.9 client who couldn't properly save Office documents to the server appears to have been fixed by upgrading the client to 10.10, so whatever was wrong, it appears to have been client-side, not server-side.

Had a user point out a folder with permissions issues again today. Back to where we started. I'm pretty upset that I've spent well into 5 figures on this setup and NOTHING is working like it should. It's been configured twice by different ACN's, we've fired each other as client/vendor because my expectations that it work are not being met. Feeling awfully foolish for dragging my company into this shiny pretty promise that the Apple route would be a great idea. Not without constant management and updating and tinkering.... How much more am I going to lose trying to make this work? Or do I just dump it all and go back to being an MS shop? Pathetic...

Hey guys,

It is a VERY long thread, so obviously I haven't read it all, so I don't know if it has been mentioned.

Just wanted to narrow your focus.

We had PLENTY of issues with AFP,

So after reading someplace that apple is ditching AFP for SMB, we've moved all our file sharing to SMB.

We have a MAC ONLY network environment, with all mac clients on 10.9.5, as well as the server, with the latest version of OS X Server 3,

And still have smbd crashes several times a day.

So the issue is not the Windows clients, but some core issue within the Mac itself.

Just to let everybody know (Yosemite 10.10.1 and Server 4):

I had a server for testing proposes and this showed no issues when Yosemite was released (showed some issues with SMB and ACLs with early Yosemite Betas) but at the moment I am experience the same problems with two Yosemite servers at customer sides with Windows 7 clients (same problem as Mavericks):

- sudden loss of access rights

- sudden crash of apps started from a SMB file share

- copy a folder with a dll in it is not possible, open the folder and copy the dll directly works 😕😟

- one Windows client works without a problem for hours, another Windows clients can not even start the app that resides at the file share

- start an app once and it crashes immediately, start it twice and it works for minutes or hours until all of sudden it can not access its files that are stored at the server

Sorry but I

@Apple: Are you going to fix this real soon or should we change to a server from a third party that can support SMB without any problems? I had already migrated two customers to Windows 2012 Server because of this buggy SMB!

Your very frustrated,

Christoph

OS X Yosemite 10.10.1 SMB share + Windows 7 x64 client

OS X:

20.12.14 21:24:15,715 digest-service[641]: digest-request: uid=0

20.12.14 21:24:15,715 digest-service[641]: digest-request: init request

20.12.14 21:24:15,717 digest-service[641]: digest-request: init return domain: [Yosemite_Name] server: [Yosemite_Name] indomain was: <NULL>

20.12.14 21:24:15,723 digest-service[641]: digest-request: uid=0

20.12.14 21:24:15,724 digest-service[641]: digest-request: od failed with 2 proto=ntlmv1-with-v2-session

20.12.14 21:24:15,724 digest-service[641]: digest-request: user=[user]

20.12.14 21:24:15,731 digest-service[641]: digest-request: kdc failed with -1561745600 proto=ntlmv1

20.12.14 21:24:15,731 digest-service[641]: digest-request: guest failed with -1561745590 proto=ntlmv1-with-v2-session

Windows:

"Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password."

"It just works" ; )

Did you already try the Windows registry fix I suggested earlier in this thread about changing the NTLM setting?

I could be mistaken, but that sure looks like the same problem I was seeing, and it's mainly an issue of Windows giving a ridiculously unhelpful error message--the actual problem has nothing to do with the password, it's a mismatched level of NTLM.

Nope. I have not tried reg fix since it may lead to connectivity issues with other Win running PCs. And SMB access to that particular OS X PC was not that much important. However, I will try re-producing the issue later on test environment and will try the fix. And will report back here.

Yes, it looks like exactly the same issue.

Yeah.. Sadly Win is notorious for it's "helpfull" error descriptions.

For reference, unless you're running a Win2000-era server, changing this setting should not affect connectivity with any Windows servers. The default on Win7 is actually 3, while XP defaulted to 0, so an unmodified Win7 install will work fine, while XP will fail without being adjusted. If you're running a Win7 client set to zero, either the registry value somehow got imported, or it was intentionally set that way at some point, maybe for connectivity with really old Win servers (ironically, I believe you get the same unhelpful error message if you try to connect to a 2K server with the value set too high).

On our campus network I heard of no issues when they trialed the higher (and normal) default, and I don't think it's likely you'll have any problems unless you either have really old Windows servers on hand, or maybe some NAS or Linux servers.

Ok, I've tried applying the fix and connecting from Win7 / Win 2008 R2 to OS X 10.9.5 - sadly the issue is still there.

Also, I was not able to connect to 10.9.5 SMB share from MC861+ MFP. with exactly the same error on OS X side and something like 'dns failed' on MFP side ; ) So.. MFP wins the 'most helpfull error message' award.

Since, I'm not feeling comfortable applying pathes to the MFP(if it is even possible) and I'm just ******, I've deployed virtual W2k8 on OS X 10.9.5 and use it for share server.. I miss 10.6

Anything better with 10.10.2?