ChrisJenkins

Q: 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

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Q: macOS Sierra always prompts for credentials for network drives

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  • by sakman74,

    sakman74 sakman74 Oct 10, 2016 4:54 PM in response to MichelRenaud
    Level 3 (748 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 10, 2016 4:54 PM in response to MichelRenaud

    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.

  • by brycesteiner,

    brycesteiner brycesteiner Oct 10, 2016 5:47 PM in response to sakman74
    Level 1 (51 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 10, 2016 5:47 PM in response to sakman74

    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.

  • by brycesteiner,

    brycesteiner brycesteiner Oct 10, 2016 6:27 PM in response to Peter Almere
    Level 1 (51 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 10, 2016 6:27 PM in response to Peter Almere

    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.

  • by sakman74,

    sakman74 sakman74 Oct 10, 2016 7:06 PM in response to brycesteiner
    Level 3 (748 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 10, 2016 7:06 PM in response to brycesteiner

    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.

  • by tod1212,

    tod1212 tod1212 Oct 10, 2016 11:49 PM in response to tod1212
    Level 1 (11 points)
    Oct 10, 2016 11:49 PM in response to tod1212

    OK, so after one day automount stopped working again.

    This is too bad.

    Really hope that Apple fixes this.

  • by Peter Almere,

    Peter Almere Peter Almere Oct 11, 2016 7:53 AM in response to MichelRenaud
    Level 2 (497 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 7:53 AM in response to MichelRenaud

    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.

  • by sakman74,

    sakman74 sakman74 Oct 11, 2016 10:56 AM in response to Peter Almere
    Level 3 (748 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 10:56 AM in response to Peter Almere

    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.

  • by PleasantSpectrum,

    PleasantSpectrum PleasantSpectrum Oct 11, 2016 11:20 AM in response to tod1212
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 11:20 AM in response to tod1212

    I must say that it is unfortunate that the issue in this thread is listed as "solved" by switching to the AFP protocol, leading to a debate between SMB and AFP performance.

     

    The issue is macOS Sierra (and possibly older versions of OS X via patches) prompts for credentials when connecting to Keychain-remembered connections, which is new behavior.  Sure it's just one extra click, but we've been accustomed to think that when we see the credential window pop up, there was a problem and the credential needs to be re-entered.

     

    Why go backwards in functionality? There should be an option to change the behavior back to only prompt on error, and not only for automation reasons.

  • by sakman74,

    sakman74 sakman74 Oct 12, 2016 6:33 AM in response to PleasantSpectrum
    Level 3 (748 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 12, 2016 6:33 AM in response to PleasantSpectrum

    i agree with you, this thread should not have a solved flag.

     

    if anyone at apple monitors this community, they will fly right past this thread.

     

    if the flag cannot be undone, i recommend we start a new topic and link to the initial post on this topic.

  • by ChrisJenkins,

    ChrisJenkins ChrisJenkins Oct 12, 2016 7:05 AM in response to sakman74
    Level 1 (27 points)
    Apple Music
    Oct 12, 2016 7:05 AM in response to sakman74

    I created a new post for this issue.

     

    BTW, I have a bug open with Apple on this and they closed it as a duplicate of another open bug. I think (hope!) they acknowledge this is a bug and hopefully it will be fixed soon.

  • by Mike Kormendy,

    Mike Kormendy Mike Kormendy Oct 12, 2016 7:39 AM in response to PleasantSpectrum
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 12, 2016 7:39 AM in response to PleasantSpectrum

    This issue is not solved.

     

    I connect to AFP shares on my network and it does not automatically connect.

  • by ChrisJenkins,

    ChrisJenkins ChrisJenkins Oct 12, 2016 7:41 AM in response to Mike Kormendy
    Level 1 (27 points)
    Apple Music
    Oct 12, 2016 7:41 AM in response to Mike Kormendy

    You might want to post that in the new thread since this one is erroneously marked as 'Solved'.

  • by Mike Kormendy,

    Mike Kormendy Mike Kormendy Oct 12, 2016 7:41 AM in response to Peter Almere
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 12, 2016 7:41 AM in response to Peter Almere

    @Peter Almer -- please remove the "Solved" status of this ticket. The issue in general is not solved.

  • by StumpyBloke,

    StumpyBloke StumpyBloke Oct 14, 2016 7:21 AM in response to ChrisJenkins
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 14, 2016 7:21 AM in response to ChrisJenkins

    This is absolutely crazy and completely nonsensical.  If you click the auto-discovered NAS share (in my case QNAP) in Finder without having entered credentials (again) you get the error 'NASNAME' can't be opened because the original item can't be found.

     

    Who could have possibly thought this was a good idea?  I hope to God(c) this is a bug!!

  • by Jakeky12,

    Jakeky12 Jakeky12 Oct 18, 2016 5:19 AM in response to ChrisJenkins
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 18, 2016 5:19 AM in response to ChrisJenkins

    This is yet another example of Apple not giving two craps about business use.  Windows shared drives are setup for SMB use not AFP.  Now as a company we will not be updating OS versions for as long as possible.

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