André Tenenbaum

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

Since I've updated our mac mini server from Mountain Lion and OSX Server 2.X to Mavericks and OSX Server 3.0  we are having sharing issues with Windows (7 and 8) and OSX Mavericks users, not being able to access files on the mac mini server.

 

What I've notice is that OSX Serer 3.0 stop working and I have to restart the Mac Mini Server to make things start working again.

 

This was not happening with Mountain Lion and OSX Server 2.X.

 

On the Windows and OSX users what happen is the computers keep trying to connect to the server and are not being able to open or copy files. Again this is intermittent, and I suspect it might be a OSX Server bug.

 

Any one having the same problem or can give us and advice would be great help.

 

Thanks.

 

Andre Tenenbaum

Mac mini, OS X Server, with OSX Server 3.0

Posted on Oct 31, 2013 8:36 AM

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

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  • by Tony@Perth,

    Tony@Perth Tony@Perth Dec 13, 2013 10:12 PM in response to André Tenenbaum
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    Dec 13, 2013 10:12 PM in response to André Tenenbaum

    Andre

     

    Like you we did exhaustive testing, some inpired by our external IT guy, some by Apple.

     

    Largely Apple's advice was useless and in fact switching one of the client PC's to SMB1 only (they must have been reading this blog too) completely took that client off the network and we wasted another half day doing rollbacks before we could get them even registering on the network again. They also got us to do an EDC dump after 'turning logging up' but the turning logging down command that we were given failed to do so and that took our server down completely by filling the whole ssd overnight. We still haven't heard back from Apple re the results from that EDC and it was pretty small as it only took us 90 seconds to replicate the problem.

     

    I've read this blog from start to finish and can say we've tried all of the suggestions, including:

     

    • clean installs of Mavericks and Server 3 (that had no effect);

    • setting up new shares on the second ssd on the server (that also had no beneficial effect, but it proved that it was nothing to do with the connected RAID);

    • disabling SMB2 & SMB3 (but as stated above that just took that client off the network altogether, apart from retaining internet access);

    * setting up a brand new Open Directory (that took everyone off the network - so we had to proceed to the next step);

    • setting up new users directly on the server (that seemed to help momentarily, but on reflection it was probably just the fact that we rebooted the server that helped as we were soon back to having the same problems);

     

    We also experinced the problems mentioned above re the ACL's getting corrupted and people loosing read and write permissions to their own files. This didn't just happen with Office files, but our IT guy wrote a few terminal commands relating to the 'temporary items' folder that Office creates in each share point to overwite any client ACL's. That may have helped but I have to admit that very shortly after that we gave up ditched the MacMini Server altogether and went back to using an old xServe running OS10.8.5 after Apple acknowledged that thiswhole debacle is a "known issue" and "their engineers were working on it".

     

    I have to say as a result that I feel seriously aggrieved by this whole experience as we have been working on this issue for over a month with little help from Apple and what supposed 'help' we have received has been useless and merely wasted more of our time and frankly I resent being used as a guinea pig as it has come at an incredible expense to our small office not to mention the dreadful affect it has had on morale.

  • by rawshooter,

    rawshooter rawshooter Dec 16, 2013 6:17 AM in response to André Tenenbaum
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 16, 2013 6:17 AM in response to André Tenenbaum

    since 3 days my smbd is running stable


    The only thing which I changed was to the DNS.

    it was set to answer "local stations only", now it's set to "all stations".

     

    Since then the smbd stays at low CPU-load, the access on the network is quick for all clients,.

     

    Keep the fingers crossed !!!

     

    Regards

    Henry

  • by sandorferenczy,

    sandorferenczy sandorferenczy Dec 16, 2013 6:22 AM in response to rawshooter
    Level 1 (95 points)
    Dec 16, 2013 6:22 AM in response to rawshooter
  • by dotpage,

    dotpage dotpage Dec 16, 2013 6:28 AM in response to rawshooter
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 16, 2013 6:28 AM in response to rawshooter

    anyone tested this if the file server is NOT the same box as the DNS server?

  • by rawshooter,

    rawshooter rawshooter Dec 16, 2013 6:28 AM in response to sandorferenczy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 16, 2013 6:28 AM in response to sandorferenczy

    Sorry, I'm using German Version of Server 3.0.1

    On the server tab are settings (forwarding and DNS-lookup).

    The DNS-lookup was set to "local clients only", now it's "all clients"

    (at least this is the literal translation)

  • by sandorferenczy,

    sandorferenczy sandorferenczy Dec 16, 2013 7:17 AM in response to rawshooter
    Level 1 (95 points)
    Dec 16, 2013 7:17 AM in response to rawshooter

    that is what i thought.

     

    we have always had that setting on "all clients", and still have the SMB issue.

  • by rawshooter,

    rawshooter rawshooter Dec 17, 2013 2:52 AM in response to André Tenenbaum
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 17, 2013 2:52 AM in response to André Tenenbaum

    today the smbd was blocked at 100% again.

    After todays update 10.9.1 no access possible at all ( smb / afp ), only guest or admin

  • by jerem holstein,

    jerem holstein jerem holstein Dec 18, 2013 1:34 PM in response to rawshooter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 18, 2013 1:34 PM in response to rawshooter

    Just retested after installing 10.9.1.  No changes that I can see.  SMB2 still fails, and SMB1 will still crash under heavy load.

     

    As far as the server becoming inaccessible after a software update, that's been an issue ever since they released MacOS 10.7 Server.  Every so often after applying a software update the SMB shares would become inaccessible.  Only reliable way to fix it is to unshare, restart, run a diskcheck for permissions and then reshare.  And even THAT will sometimes fail.  Bottom line is that SMBX has always been notoriously quirky for windows computers.

  • by CH-Ingenieure,

    CH-Ingenieure CH-Ingenieure Dec 18, 2013 11:20 PM in response to André Tenenbaum
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 18, 2013 11:20 PM in response to André Tenenbaum

    After two weeks heavy truoble - I have to retourn to Snow Lion and Server 2

     

    Mavericks and Server 3 is a b*tch with SMB...

  • by jerem holstein,

    jerem holstein jerem holstein Dec 19, 2013 1:24 PM in response to CH-Ingenieure
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 19, 2013 1:24 PM in response to CH-Ingenieure

    Can't blame you to go back.  My box is dual boot, so I can reboot to compare results.  10.8.5 with Server 2 was a bit finicky, but it worked.  Maverick with Server 3 I can get to go for brief periods, but it routinely crashes and goes down.

     

    Fix this, Apple!

  • by dotpage,

    dotpage dotpage Dec 20, 2013 3:10 PM in response to jerem holstein
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Dec 20, 2013 3:10 PM in response to jerem holstein

    Updates:

     

    1- Spoke for a while with an Apple SE and was told tht for now Microsoft's flavor of SMB running on Win 8 and 2012 RDS will not be "supported". Apple has a Radar ticket on it, and it may be supported soon.

     

    2- We have two directories, one OD(different server) and one AD, after binding the mavericks File Server to the AD(in addition to OD), the problem resolved itself. Now ALL our users can authenticate to the file server without issues and withour smbd freaking out.

     

    We are still on OS X 9, didn't dare to upgrade to 9.1...

     

    Our week and a half long nightmare is over(knock on wood). Good luck with yours. If I can be of any help, please PM me!

  • by Kasper E,

    Kasper E Kasper E Dec 24, 2013 6:47 AM in response to André Tenenbaum
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 24, 2013 6:47 AM in response to André Tenenbaum

    Not running sever app but running file server on a small network. Maverics upgrade from snow leopard, wifi turned off.

    It seems netbios name resolution stop working after some time.

     

    A workaround: edit the hosts file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and point the server name to the ip adress - - on all windows computers.

  • by jerem holstein,

    jerem holstein jerem holstein Dec 27, 2013 6:44 AM in response to Kasper E
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 27, 2013 6:44 AM in response to Kasper E

    I tried editing the Hosts file, and forcing the connection to smb1, but I still see disconnections on my Windows 7 machine.  Only way to fix them is to force quit the smbd process on the Maverick server, or restart the Maverick machine.

     

    Here's hoping the forthcoming 10.9.2 will fix this! 

  • by Kasper E,

    Kasper E Kasper E Dec 27, 2013 8:29 AM in response to jerem holstein
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 27, 2013 8:29 AM in response to jerem holstein

    Strange and sorry to hear, it a rally annoying bug. Still works for me. I havent forced to smb1.

     

    added this line

    192.168.1.50               bicmac

    C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

     

    havent restarted the mini for 3 days and its ok, not a nice workaround though.

     

    me too hoping for a real fix from Apple.

  • by Hallowed,

    Hallowed Hallowed Dec 30, 2013 5:40 PM in response to Kasper E
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2013 5:40 PM in response to Kasper E

    Hi everyone,

     

    I do not know if I am having the EXACT same issue or its something else entirely. I upgraded my Mac Mini that I purchased for a shared Apple server at home and connected a Thunderblot Pegasus RAID array to it. I connect from my Desktop Windows 8.1 Alienware desktop and my connections are intermittent at best. Sometimes it works sometimes it does not.

     

    I editied the host files to hard code the Ip Address resolution as ping would time out.

     

    Before reading this I hit PING for 4 mintues and watched as it would alternate between

     

    Reply from 192.168.1.100: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=64

    and

    Request timed out.

     

    Here is the weird part. It recovered each time from the timeout with no intervention on my part. But each time I went to Windows Explorer and clicked on the Apple Share....right back to Timed Out.

     

    I have switched the cable out to a brand new CAT 6 cable and put the cable in different ports on my Netgear switch. I have not called Apple yet to see if its the hardware on the NIC as it does seem to be software. I have not tested the above fixes as I am unclear how close our situations are.

     

    The access to the shares is through a network login account.

     

     

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