Make SMB on OS X more reliable

4

I'm having trouble with the SMB/Samba functionality in OS X (Lion, Mountain Lion):

  1. It often takes forever to connect and mount

  2. It often freezes on this progress dialog and it can't be closed, (x) button does simply nothing.
     
    OS X SMB Connecting to Server

  3. It takes a few seconds even if the drive is already mounted and the connection is up.
     
    OS X SMB share icon
    I would expect it opens the mounted directory immediately.

  4. Every click on mounted directory sidebar item in Finder means reconnecting to server or something like that – it also takes a few seconds to list a share
     
    enter image description here

  5. A directory listings in already opened Finder windows, and share desktop icon does not work after waking computer from sleep. The connection apparently drops after a sleep and OS X doesn't reconnect, so I must remount the share manually (and close the new Finder window which is opened after making a connection).

  6. If the SMB server become unavailable, all Finder windows freeze

There's no such issues with "Map network drive" feature in Windows... It needs to be set up only once, then it just works.

Is it possible to improve the SMB in OS X to the Windows level of SMB reliability?

babca

Posted 2013-05-18T21:45:07.600

Reputation: 521

For what it's worth, I got used to that. I have the same issues as you, except for no. 5. SMB on OS X has always been terribly bad. Switch to AFP if you can. – slhck – 2013-05-18T21:56:46.007

I can not share this opinion. We have several SMB-shares we connect to with MacOS-Clients and Never had one of these problems. Which SMB-Server are you running? And what about network-stability? We did find out that the Macs are a bit more sensitive to network-relatet issues than the windows clients. – heiglandreas – 2013-05-19T06:27:59.490

My network is pretty stable and so my homeserver running Openmediavault (Debian distro) 24/7. My second SMB server is a common Win8 desktop. I have a macbook with OS X and Win8: SMB on Win works like a charm (one time setup), but on OS X, I must turn off WiFi to unmount drives, then turn WiFi on and remount drives over and over again... – babca – 2013-05-19T13:15:46.980

Answers

0

Since you're running Debian server, would you like to try NFS? It is supported by Mac/Win as well.

As for the issue, I'd suggest reviewing all Samba settings on the server and check for routing problems on your Mac computer. Logs are a good place to start. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080328110504281

Ernestas

Posted 2013-05-18T21:45:07.600

Reputation: 605

Unfortunately NFS isn't an option because SMB (used also from Windows) uses precomposed unicode filenames, and NFS access files with decomposed unicode names so I can't access files with accents in filename with Finder. AFAIK Windows does not support NFS. – babca – 2013-10-29T23:45:38.937

Asked: 2013-05-18T21:45:07.600

Viewed: 2 149 times

Active: 2019-11-29T16:03:00.540