10.9.2 Mavericks and can no longer connect to our SMB file share on the network.

Like others I am having issues. I cannot properly connect to my shared folder on Win 8.1 machine. Finder just hangs most of the time. I tried the fix mentioned above with forcing smb1, and that so far seems to be working OK in terms of connecting, but the transfer speed is essentially halved. I'm really surprised Apple is taking so long to fix this.

I'm curious if anyone here tested Yosemite beta to see if it has this issue still?

Still an issue in Yosemite. The command to force SMB1 works but the upload still suqs....

Very disappointing that SMB is not working in Yosemite... OSX seems to be bug ridden these days, what's going on Apple?!

I had the same problems with my new Retina MBP and found this crazy (but working) solution:

http://blog.helloyama.com/post/77813860132/replacing-the-os-x-10-9-mavericks-smb -stack-with

For convenience I repost this blogpost here:

Replacing the OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) SMB Stack with Samba3

A couple months back, I was excited to hear that Apple was working on a new SMB stack for their new operating system, OS X 10.9. However, once it finally hit, I realized that the new stack was even worse than the old one. I was unable to mount CIFS or SMB shares on our local storage cluster (a lovely 2 petabyte capacity Isilon cluster), getting error messages in system logs that looked like the following:

2/24/14 2:47:34.000 PM kernel[0]: smb_smb_ssnsetup: HOSTNAME doesn’t support extended security, this server will be deprecated in the future!

I started to wonder if replacing Apple’s stack with the SMB stack provided by Sambawould be a good idea. It was. If you are using any storage appliance and have found that your SMB/CIFS access has been effectively cut off, or that it’s incredibly slow, read the following steps to replace your SMB stack in OS X.

1. Install Homebrew - Using OS X as a sysadm has been mostly a blessing, but sometimes a curse. OS X has a great BSD based core and ships with many utilities found in other *nixes, but more than often those versions have various nuances that make me want to switch to the GNU provided versions. Homebrew allows you to download packages simply by running a ‘brew install programname’ in the Terminal. (After installing Homebrew, make sure you run a ‘sudo vim /etc/paths’ and move ‘/usr/local/bin’ to the top. This places /usr/local/bin in a higher priority when your system searches your $PATH for whatever binary you’re trying to execute.
   
2. Once you have Homebrew installed (make sure you run ‘brew doctor’ to ensure all dependencies are installed)
   
3. Next, install the Homebrew provided version of Samba. Currently, the version is at 3.6.20 (the command should be ‘brew install samba’)
   
4. Homebrew will install this version of Samba to /usr/local/Cellar/samba/3.6.20 — if you aren’t familiar with the history of the /usr/local directory, read this) (if you understand the purpose of /usr/local, you’ll realize that installing here is completely safe and will not overwrite any of your operating system’s components). Homebrew creates a symlink to any binaries made in the /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin folders.
   
5. Next, we need to unload Apple’s netbios and samba daemons (Daemons is another term for services in the *nix world).
   sudo launchctl stop com.apple.netbiosdsudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.netbiosd.plist
   
6. Next, we need to create plist files that point to the new versions of smbd andnmbd. These files will need to be created in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ — the contents and names of the files should be match the following (notice the location of the smbd and nmbd binaries — /usr/local/sbin/, where smbd and nmbd are symlinked to their respective binaries at /usr/local/Cellar/samba/3.6.20):
   org.samba.smbd.plist
   org.samba.nmbd.plist
   (I’m currently experimenting with the -D and -F flags for both of these services. For a description of the flags, check out the man pages for the respective service)
7. Now that you have the services’ plist files ready, go ahead and launch them.
   sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.samba.smbd.plistsudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.samba.nmbd.plist
8. If you don’t have any shares currently open, the changes should take effect immediately. However, I highly suggest a restart after this process.
   
9. Enjoy your new SMB3 stack! Immediately I noticed MUCH faster transfer speeds. Example: Grabbed a 900MB ISO off of a share in 6 seconds!

My testimony. I have very bad speeds with SMB2. Mavericks and worse than mountainlion.
SMB2 is poorly implemented in 10.9 It probably rewrite everything ... I will also reinstall Montain Lion because Apple will not do anything for us. As usual, they make fun of their customers ...

Hi everybody ! The problem seems still to persist. I have been waiting for, as I thought, long enough to overcome the initial issues with Mavericks but obviously it was not long enough. Since I upgraded to Mavericks the connection to shares is breaking continuously. I am about to test you suggestions, ie using cifs and IP addresses instead of smb and FCDN and hope something will work out for me. However, in my case, if the connection to the share fails and I reboot, then eventually everything settles down and normal work is possible. If at the end of the day the iMacs are brought down, the next morning the whole game starts over. If I have reached a stable network conditions and at later stage another iMac joins it, then this bring the whole network down. And at the end: Useless to say, but this is really a shame on Apple !!! Will never upgrade to Yosemite even if they would pay me for that.

What is your beef with Yosemite? It fixes the SMB issues.

I agree with PleasantSpectrum. We have a mixed network of Macs & PC's, with both a Windows 2012 Server & a Mac Server. We struggled all year with SMB issues while on Maverick. I trial tested Yosemite for a month then upgraded all Macs & Mac Server, which will require a $20 upgrade charge, and so far we have experienced much better network connectivity. It isn't as fast as I would like for it to be, however, at least we are now able to connect and stay connected. BTW...the first Yosemite update issued last week seemed to further improve our SMB issues.

Does this mean Yosemite resolves the problem ? There were several posts here before which suggested that this was not the case. It would be good to know that the issue has been resolved. I simply don't dare to upgrade in order not to get into more troubles.

BTW, I resolved the SMB problem in my case, may be someone would be interested. My working environment consists of one MS Server 2008 R2 wich offers shares used by workstations in the local network. Actually the iMacs didn't need the shares, there are VMs, Parallels 10, that are using them. However, the iMacs were causing SMB2 traffic to the server which, as I believe originates from NETBIOSD and server mounts if someone was trying to access the shares from within the iMac. In this situation I had the whole network down for 5-15 min when the machines were powered on. Then everything settled down but the connection to the server was very unstable. There was a lot of SMB2 traffic, absolutely useless in my case, floating between the iMacs and the server.

What I have done on the iMacs was to disable the NETBIOSD by using this command in the terminal:

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.netbiosd.plist

I removed all server definitions in Finder > Go > Connect to server. Also created a nsmb.conf file in ~/Library/Preferences/ with the entry:

smb_neg=smb1_only

I made sure that all shared resources are checked off. Also checked the mounted file systems and unmounted those who were SMB driven. Having done that I checked the network traffick from the iMac and didn't register any SMB2 packets. The I ran the Parallels VMs and let the SMB flow between the MS Windows clients and the server which wouldn't cause a problem.

I guess this is not the typical working environment for all but wanted to share the results of my 2 weeks struggle with the Maverick - SMB problem.

Best !

Virnico, I cannot say Yosemite "resolves the problem" for everyone, but I can say it's much better in my house now. We do still have some hesitation connecting to both Windows & Mac shares on the network by the iMacs but nothing like the 5+ minute waits we had before using Maverick, even with the latest Maverick update. On a side note, we never experienced any issues connecting to Mac shares via Windows 7 workstations, only with the Macs. I'm not sure if Mac & Windows will ever be totally fluid in network negotiating but I remain hopeful!

Sorry I can't give a definitive answer.

Cheers!

In our environment which consists of 260 laptops/desktops with 30 being macs (thank god its not more), no mac servers, only windows/linux/unix. the switch to 10.9.5 was welcomed, however it is still not as fast as 10.8.5. On top of all things, i've been telling our users to turn off wireless while they work on the LAN as this does increase speed and stability. Its still not perfect and I cannot say for sure that Yosemite is actually any better, we will be testing this on a small amount of laptops to make sure (not that we will deploy Yosemite before 10.10.4)

Hopefully that will enlighten a few IT professionals that are looking for an insight from someone having these issues within a company.

Fred B.

I can confirm Yosemite fixes the SMB problem, at least for the ~15 Mac users in our company (including myself), who connect to Windows shares of various flavors (Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012 R2). No more SMB1 workarounds...it has been great.

At home I just swapped out our old wireless router with an Apple AirPort Extreme 802.11ac model, and can now transfer files from my Windows 8.1 PC wirelessly to my MBP at ~18MB/s (megaBYTES/second). I'm a happy camper with Yosemite.

Well, I might give it a try with some test machine. Would be intersting to know whether the issue still persists. Anyway, in the working environment described in my previous post I see much less unnecessary traffic and the network performance increased enormously.

Thanks for the feedback, PleasantSpectrum and itsmayes.

Cheers.

I see 3 issues here:

1. Cannot connect to an 'smb' share at all
2. Cannot use previously defined Mac 'aliases' to connect/navigate to Windows directories
3. Slow performance using 'smb' with some flavour of 'Mavericks' (10.9.x)

Issues 1 and 2 may well go together. Our problem in our company was this:

Fleet of 80 + Mac users running Mountain Lion (10.8.x) worked well getting to 'smb' shares and directories. They had setup aliases on their Mac Desktops to gain quick access to these.

An upgrade project to move these users to Mavericks meant that these aliases no longer worked. Nor would a direct path connection.

The below is an example of what would be entered into the 'Connect to Server...' dialog:

smb://servername.domain.com/Users/username

Under Mavericks, there would be a mount achieved but then an empty finder window and perhaps a message pointing to insufficient permissions.

With collaboration of our Windows server guys, we found that Mavericks has a problem with 'traverse folder' permissions. Our directory structure was designed to not allow the users to see the contents of the parent folder of the one they are navigating to ( "Users" in the above path example ). Mavericks can take you directly to where you have permission, as long as you use the 'Connect to Server...' method. This is cumbersome as referring back to this mounted directory later means going back to the Finder to reinitiate the connection, and of course aliases/shortcuts won't work.

As of this writing, there is no fix for this, unless the Windows permissions are to be modified on the Server. Yosemite seems to return to the behaviour of Mountain Lion.

I have no comments or further tests made at this point regarding point 3 with the slower performance.

I hope this helps and clears up for some folks. There are no doubt going to be differences depending on whether you are in an Enterprise, small business or at home. The core similarity is the connecting to Windows shares.

Brilliant. I've been reading up on this for three weeks. This is the ONLY thing that worked. Thank you so much, my Friend!