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macOS Sierra always prompts for credentials for network drives

At home we have several Macs that mount, on login, some SMB network drives from various servers (OS X Server and Synology NAS). The credentials (username and password) for the network drives are stored in the user's keychain by way of the 'remember this password in my keychain' option the very first time the drives was ever mounted. As a result a command like 'mount' command successfully mounts the drives without the user needing to interact with an authentication dialogue. This has been working just fine for the longest time an all the way up through OS X 10.11.6.


In Sierra, any attempt to mount a network drive always pops up the authentication dialogue. The password may be prefilled (presumably from the keychain) but the user still has to respond to the dialogue by clicking OK. This is a huge problem for me as it breaks loads of automation scripts that I have that rely on using 'mount' (the problem is not specific to mount however; the same issue occurs if you use something like Finder's 'Connect to Server' command).


I've tried deleting all the 'network password' keychain entries so that they get re-creqted (they do) but the problem behaviour still occurs.


Anyone know if this is a bug or by design?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Sep 24, 2016 10:34 AM

Reply
107 replies

Feb 20, 2017 11:40 AM in response to ChrisJenkins

After reading this thread, I just posted feedback for Apple. Ever since I "upgraded" to Sierra I get CONSTANT prompts to accept network connections from MS Office 2008 and from a plugin I use daily in my photography, Perfect Photo Suite 8 running as a plugin in Photoshop CC (Perfect Resize). It is beyond annoying, and is also time-consuming and inefficient to have to keep clicking "accept" when I have configured my firewall settings to accept connections from these apps. What is Apple thinking?

Apr 28, 2017 6:11 AM in response to Peter Almere

AFP has been faded out on newer systems, it does not have the encrypted security that smb does and on mixed network afp will only work across mac platforms. I have similar issue as the one you answered, the problem resides on the PC Server side, since I am not utilizing a server account, though I have permissions to access the file server my account that is running on my mac is local to the mac and I have to access the server through an account that is local to the server as such username@server.local. The issue I'm having is that Keychain access is dumping the @server.local part of the username upon restart. If anyone has a solution to that other than joining an active directory, that would be great. The reason why I don't want to join the active directory is because it considerably slows down my machine and I'm using this mac for graphics, in most cases I need all the computing power I can get. 6 core Mac Pro.

Apr 28, 2017 6:17 AM in response to SASanderson

Not Apple's fault. You are using a 9 year old product on a new system, upgrade to 2016 or stop using Microsoft. 2008 does not have any new updates to accommodate new security policies built into the system. It keeps asking you because basically it's telling you that Apple is not responsible for any security issues that 2008 and you are allowing by clicking accept. It's annoying, but it's for your own protection.

Jul 30, 2017 3:03 AM in response to garyfromeuless

Wow is that true Gary? Well then it is antiquated but not yet obsolete I would say.... Did you check the speed on your own system as I advised? Because that is in my opinion the only thing that counts. I said that when either one SMB or AFP is faster, you should choose the faster one.


Even though I wrote this more than half a year ago, it still is accurate.


In the meantime apple has posted how to handel in case you have the prompting for credentials problem. And I am testing a system that is High on Sierra.


But for your information you can read more here:

AFP vs SMB Performance |Official Apple Support Communities

https://www.tech-knowhow.com/?p=2949

network - Is AFP slated to be removed from future versions of macOS? - Ask Different


Thanks for your post and happy reading!

Aug 24, 2017 10:01 AM in response to Mike Kormendy

I have a building with 200 machines that I've upgraded to Sierra only to find that the home drives don't mount with AFP any more. I switch to SMB in the directory utility and it connects. Problem is we have users with multiple nestled folders with illegal characters that may give the end user fits when trying to copy up new files or folders (Not to mention no easy way to script the change to SMB. None that I've found yet at least.) I don't even know at this point if documents with illegal characters can be opened? ( When referring to illegal characters I am pointing out the restrictions on PC files that typically are shared or mounted with SMB.)

Sep 25, 2016 10:41 AM in response to ChrisJenkins

Just to clarify. I mentioned 'mount' above but that is not really correct. I am not referring to the OS command line command 'mount' but rather the AppleScript mount command as in:


try

mount volume "${url}"

end try


the same problem afflicts the Finders 'Connect to Server...' function.


Definitely a behaviour change; I hope it is a temporary one and gets fixed in a near-term update.

Sep 28, 2016 6:48 PM in response to ChrisJenkins

what you have is a leftover bug in macOS Sierra that was noticed some time ago by developers when it was still in beta.


i get this authentication prompt also, it reappears more than once each time i boot into Sierra. regardless of AFP or SMB protocol used to connect to it.


i am disappointed that Apple has not worked out bugs that were already known to them prior to pushing the GM.

Sep 29, 2016 2:32 AM in response to zero7404

That is pretty disappointing. I also see a few other nasty bugs relating to SMB shares:


1. Mounting an SMB share that is hosted on an OS X machine (OS X 10.11.6 / OS X Server 5.1.7) is extremely slow in Sierra (30+ seconds) compared to El Capitan. Shares hosted on other SMB providers such as Synology NAS still mount quickly (2-3 seconds).


2. SMB shares hosted on a Synology NAS mounted via Finder/Applescript 'mount' do not mount correctly. They *always* mount as '/Volumes/sharename-1' instead of '/Volumes/sharename' and there is a bogus '/Volumes/sharename' mountpoint created but not used (which then has to be cleaned up manually).


3. It is fairly easy to provoke a race condition such that you end up with the same SMB share mounted twice on the same mount point!


It's almost like they did not really test this stuff... I have logged bugs for all these against the 10.12.1 Beta. Now I wish I had actually tested the original betas prior to upgrading (so that I could have avoided upgrading!). My bad.


I also see several other non-SMB related issues too but that's another story.

Sep 29, 2016 1:23 PM in response to ChrisJenkins

quite frankly, i don't get why its such a job to mount a nas and remember that permanently, as windows does.


every time i reboot into the os the finder windows appear even though i have chosen them to be hidden in login items.


i use drive mounter, which is a paid app - it mounts my nas shares and does not show me the finder windows after mounting.


but the problem remains that i need an app to do something that an OS platform should be able to do seamlessly.


these are workings of the apple platform that have not progressed at all since i bought my first mac computer nearly 3 years ago, even though the OS has been maintained and updated with every new release.

Sep 30, 2016 9:10 AM in response to ChrisJenkins

I have this issue also and from reading about it; it's apparent that this was squawked in the beta testing and still

made it to the final initial Sierra release.

This was my worse upgrade ever mainly due to this issue. To make a very very long story short; my Photo's library (~260 Gb) was on my synology NAS and working good in El Capitan; My NAS was also auto mounting; had both AFP and SMB enabled; I noted that the nas didn't mount when Sierra first came up; manually (connect to server) mounted it and the first run of the photo's app just hung with white screen/spinning busy indicator. No indication of what was going on; Force quit and retry after reboot and re mount of the nas; same results; first time i let it run with the blank white screen for an hour before force quitting it; second time >6 hrs. Subsequent attempts to access the nas resulted in dock and menubar freezes and one required a forced power reboot. During all of this; my photo library apparently

became corrupted. I was able to take an older backup (lost some stuff); copy it to a usb drive and get Photo's to update and run with it. Not real clear to me if there's multiple issues in my case (obvious the inability to auto mount but there also seems to have been something change wrt AFP or networked storage communications).

I had both AFP and SMB enable on the NAS coming out of El Capitan; i've since disabled AFP and will not be using time machine for future backups. Neither will I update my other 4 mac's/OSx's until this issue(s) has a reasonable resolution. To me this is sending a message that Apple really isn't that interested in the business/office customer.

You can sign me a disappointed FanBoy

macOS Sierra always prompts for credentials for network drives

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