macOS Sierra always prompts for credentials for network drives

The problem is fixed for me. Automount works again.

Here is what I did:

- deleted the old shared volume item in user startup items.

- deleted any entrys regarding the NAS (Synology) in the keychain.

PLUS:

- installed the latest cricial update for my Synology NAS (6.0.2 update 2)

Then:

restart Mac, connect to shared volume in finder with cmd+k, drag connected share into user startup items.

-> automount works again.

Hello;

I've tried this (initially tried it prior to the DSM update) and it still fails for me (Prompts for credentials after restart).

I tried it with the finder cmd-k smb://synologynasbonjourname and with smb://synologynasIPaddress

both after clearing my keychain symbology network entries.

If/when this issues is resolved (I suspect/hope that a Sierra update will do so) I'll be able to upgrade my other macs (esp the server).

@DrMemory99

Don't use smb try afp instead. You can disable smb in the DSM and enable afp. It works much faster too. Try to see if that solves your problem. Besides I believe that DSM has different smb settings. But I am not 100% sure of that. This would mean that you also have to check which smb settings you use.

When working with a mac, afp is the protocol of choice.

Oh yes and I did not add my nas drive to the startup items. How it mounts on it's own is still a miracle. I am still looking how I managed to get it working that way...

in my experience, AFP has always worked more smoothly for me compared with SMB, despite what the IT industry says about SMB vs. AFP.

ChrisJenkins wrote:

I'm not disputing that; for Apple environments AFP has traditionally been superior to SMB. But now even Apple themselves are telling everyone to move to SMB (and have been for a couple of years now) and they have officially deprecated AFP. It seems likely that eventually AFP will disappear, at least as a supported general purpose file sharing protocol. So regardless of what one feels I think it is time to move SMB and pressure Apple to fix any issues with it.

And of course if one needs any kind of Apple/Microsoft or Apple/Linux interoperability then SMB is anyway your only realistic choice (okay, you also have NFS for Linux).

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply and.... I tried to use SMB. It's a mess... It simply won't work as it should. I get the same problems as you and others have. And besides that, I get slow working network connections. This may be due to the fact that I also have a WD MyBook Live in my network which may not be completely up-to-date to the latest SMB standards. But also my very new and state-of-the-art Synology gives problems.

Therefore right at this moment you should try afp connections and see what happens.

I am sure that it will work.

With SMB connection, I have to give in passwords and Keychain password etc. When I use afp the disc mounts on it's own free will. No password no problem.

I expect that afp is still capable of transporting more information on a mac than smb can, or that there is a bug in 10.12 that hopefully will be resolved in a future update. So if you try afp for now, and smb again after the next update it may prevent you from insulting some heavenly figures.....

AFP is no good when you have shares on Windows and Linux-based servers though.

Same problem here - I get the stupid dialog prompt every time. In a sense I'm glad it's not just me, but bummed that it's another bad move by Apple.

all, regardless of share protocol used, i feel this might actually be a keychain issue mostly.

smb, i use that in windows 10 on my mbp, no problems.

afp, i use that in os 10.11 on my mbp, no problems.

this type of issue is not really talking back to updating the nas's firmware, regardless of brand used.

perhaps im not right, at the moment i feel thats what seems to be the problem. if the protocols were changed somehow in sierra, id expect nas manufacturers to be issuing firmware updates to take advantage of the changes.

sakman74 wrote:

if apple does not fix this soon, i'm going back to the image i took (el capitan), where this problem does not exist.

I really don't think it's Sierra itself. The reason I came to this conclusion is because my computers that didn't get upgraded to Sierra started doing it too. There was a security and Safari update for El Capitan right before the Sierra update. The next day and for the next week all my El Capitan computers were asking permission to log into the Mac Server (it had received the update too) even though they had not been upgraded to Sierra even though it was saved in keychain.

I don't know exactly what happened but I remember reading this was going to be standard fare and it was immediately implemented.

I can see where this causes problems for some. For me it hasn't been a huge issue, but more of an inconvenience.

The problem with AFP is the speed. SMB3 is much faster on the macs with the modern OS's. I was reluctant to switch but I had to with the speed. Folders with lots of files were so slow to come up across the network and with lots of computers it was just getting overloaded.

Sierra is nice because now searches are working across the network drive where it wasn't in the last two OS's. The speed is good and the only issue I see is the auto-login problem.

that's interesting brycesteiner, might be a possibility, idk.

i did not notice that was the case before taking the upgrade to sierra.

i imaged my computer on Sept. 10 (dual boot el capitan/win 10), and i recall taking the sierra update around Sept. 26 or around there. between that time there were no updates in the app store that i think could have caused this - and if i did take an update in that time frame - it did not result in having the authentication issue. that much i am certain of. for me, the issues started after upgrading.

OK, so after one day automount stopped working again.

This is too bad.

Really hope that Apple fixes this.

It seems that also in the future smb will require you to log in. I am not completely sure about this but there are more people stating that. On macrumors https://goo.gl/24enA2 you can find a small thread about the mounting issue. And there is even an app called Automounter in the app store.

I am not offering a solution for Windows servers, but on my linux operated Synology and WDnas I can use afp as I mentioned before. I have done a test on the speed that I can reach with afp compared to smb.

There is no doubt that at least on my system afp is much faster than smb. Even though I could read countless posts on internet where 'people who know' (because they say that they know) will tell you that smb is much faster. My idea is that you should do a test on your own system to find out if this is also the case in your network. I tested with Blackmagic. And then you can decide what is best for you. I use afp (on a Windows system smb might give you a better performance).

I think the situation may not change until the new APFS is released in 2017.

personally, i do not notice significant speed differences when i copy to/from the nas with respect to the 2 different protocols -

high file/folder count copy

large file copy

whether i am booted into win10 and connected with SMB, or booted into OS 10.11 and connected with AFP - file/folder transfer speed seems about the same to me.

i only have a single NAS on my home network (WD My Cloud) and am on 5 GHz wifi channel that is fairly stable, not a lot of interference/noise.

to the concern in point - i think authentication has to happen once per login or bootup of an OS, that should be taken care of by the keychain when the computer tries to connect with the nas first time after boot. sometimes i wonder for my situation, why i need to authenticate as admin (admin of the nas), because i am connecting to public shares that do not have restrictions.