Copying files to/from Windows SMB share hangs

[Seizure1990]

So as far as I can tell, OS X's Finder has an issue with SMB shares. This isn't old news, I have seen tons of threads regarding this, but most of them aren't really the same problem I have, and I have thus far not found any reasonable fixes which worked. There were some suggestions to completely replace Apple's SMB service with a third party one, but doing so apparently involves tons of fiddling around with configurations and being competent with the SMB technology on a technical level, which is NOT going to work for our office setting. Our users are not very savvy at all, and to be honest, not even I want to deal with all that nonsense to fix something which should really work OOB. I have tried other various fixes involving editing the kernel options and stuff like that. Nothing fixes the issue, and it has been getting progressively worse and worse. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Exact information on the issue is as fallows:

 

At the office I work at, we have a Windows 2012 server hosting some file shares over SMB. Everything in that regards is very simple and basic. Standard settings, nothing fancy.

 

All of our Windows machines have no issues with the file shares, and have not had any issues since we began using them. The Mac computers in our office are a different story. They just really do not seem to like the SMB protocol. Our latest issue is that two of our machines (and possibly more) have issues copying files, especially large ones. This goes for both directions. When copying files FROM the server, finder seems to "hang" and do nothing while the progress bar continues to animate, as if it is processing something or waiting, but not actually copying the file. When copying files to the server, it seems to be a bit better but not by much. The copy starts sooner (though there is still a very noticeable hang) but the actual speed of the transfer is unacceptable. When copying small files (like less then a megabyte) the transfer seems instant, which doesn't surprise me, but there is still a slight hang before anything gets done.

 

There is a caveat to this though. If I use the terminal to rsync the very same files, there is NO hang. At all. The speeds are a bit slower then I'd like, but I'm not sure if that issue is still related (though it might be) or just something else with our network which needs to be ironed out.

 

The two machines I know which are affected by this are both running 10.7. We have other machines at various versions, which have not been tested.

 

What exactly is going on here? Will an upgrade to Mavericks most definitely fix this? I'm sure someone will suggest it, but I'd like to know if it's one of those "may as well try" things, or if I am discussing an issue that is actually resolved in the update.

 

Thanks again for any help.

[#Michael]

Until OS X 10.9.2 Apple has had a ###### poor implementation of the smb protocol.  They have always relied on afp and cifs.  It was only at 10.9 that they implemented support for smb2 with the impending retirement of afp.  I'd definitely recommend that you try 10.9.2 if you want to use smb when trying to copy files over to a windows share.  Otherwise, try mounting a share using cifs and see if that works.

[Seizure1990]

I am having one of the machines download Mavericks now. I will be seeing if that works.

 

However, I find it really odd that Apple would release their OS with functionality/services that don't operate how they should. I thought the whole point of buying Mac was to have it "just work"?</admittedly biased ranting from a Windows user>

[Sikh]

We are a Mac / Unix company at work and I can tell you the SMB issues you are seeing are weird. The SMB Server implementation in Lion was definitely broken / different. Since Microsoft really hasn't opened up the SMB protocol till SMB3, Linux Devs and Apple have had to reverse engineer the SMB protocol which is why Apples implementation starting lion sucked balls. Before then their actual SERVER OS's had a team working on making every component work. Once Apple released lion and a server app which will turn any machine into a "server" thats when things went to crap. The SMB Implementation was finally fixed in 10.7.2 i think? Regardless, its not as detailed as it was in Snow Leopard, but you can turn any share into a SMB share and it works fine.

 

Your problem is on the client side, so a simple "connect as smb" shouldnt be a problem. Ive never had a problem with lion or mountain lion connecting to SMB shares. We move all types of data. Small and Big, so Some users will be moving 20+gbs in nothing but small files, and some users are moving 100+ gbs in 1 or 2 files. So I'm surprised you are having this issue. Since you are using 2012 server, I would definitely like to know how mavericks works for you connecting to these machines.

I would also recommend you try to connect as cifs:// to the share and see if that fixes your issue? Although this will drop you down to SMB1, its a good way to test if that helps you. If not, I would have you try NFS. Im a big Unix guy so I prefer NFS over anything anyway. I don't know how windows works with NFS and I can assume poorly, but i would recommend trying CIFS to drop down to SMB1 for the macs having the issue you describe, and then NFS if possible.

[Seizure1990]

I am pretty sure that my org is stuck using SMB. I don't particularly mind this, but it's not even really up to me. This is what the server runs on, and our general motto here for the IT guys has been to keep our tech as steady and stable as possible (as opposed to flipping back and forth between different protocols, software, etc).

 

I will try the cifs work-around right now though.

[Seizure1990]

I tried accessing the share via the cifs protocol. The behavior was the same, if not worse (this time, the progress window froze and I had to wait a bit before I was able to stop the copy. However. I should note that when it unfroze, it seemed like some information had been transfered, though not much at all, and it was stuck at that number while I was closing it)

[Sikh]

Seizure,

 

I definitely understand that. Believe me, with the line of work my company does, making a small minuscule change can push production back for an hour which costs us 100k+ easily.

 

Thats why I recommended the CIFS and NFS work around, it would all be on the mac / client computers and nothing would have to change on the server. The only thing I'm unsure about is if Windows Server has the option to broadcast a share as NFS since the NFS protocol is open source and not closed like SMB and AFP.

 

Sikh

[Seizure1990]

Now that you mention it, I do remember that it's possible to share the same directory under an NFS share, in parallel with the SMB. I will talk with the other techs about this. Thanks for the tip/reminder, and I'll return when I have some results.

[Seizure1990]

Hey guys, thanks for the tips and help so far.

 

I spoke with the other tech, and he said setting up an NSF share would be too much hassle. I was under the impression it was actually very easy, and would play nice with all other setups so long as we gave the share a different name then the current SMB one, but maybe he knows something I don't? I will ask him about this either way.

 

Aside from that, I got around to upgrading the Mac machines. It fixed the original problem, and now downloads/uploads on the SMB server function at decent speeds, but it created a new issue in its wake. Now, browsing/listing directory contents takes a very long time (no longer then a minute from what I've seen, but still long enough to be very frustrating). I've seen all sorts of suggestions, most of which involved hacking around with Mac default settings and other terminal wizardry. None of them seemed to help much or at all.

 

What did work was installing a trial for Path Finder and using that. Everything works flawlessly. But I am wary of using a third party route, and I am unsure of how well it will integrate with the system (Won't other applications, ie Photoshop or MS Word) continue to use the original Finder app, and have all the same issues?

 

If anyone can help me untangle this thorny issue that is Mac-SMB functionality, I would greatly appreciate it.

[#Michael]

Hey guys, thanks for the tips and help so far.

 

I spoke with the other tech, and he said setting up an NSF share would be too much hassle. I was under the impression it was actually very easy, and would play nice with all other setups so long as we gave the share a different name then the current SMB one, but maybe he knows something I don't? I will ask him about this either way.

 

Aside from that, I got around to upgrading the Mac machines. It fixed the original problem, and now downloads/uploads on the SMB server function at decent speeds, but it created a new issue in its wake. Now, browsing/listing directory contents takes a very long time (no longer then a minute from what I've seen, but still long enough to be very frustrating). I've seen all sorts of suggestions, most of which involved hacking around with Mac default settings and other terminal wizardry. None of them seemed to help much or at all.

 

What did work was installing a trial for Path Finder and using that. Everything works flawlessly. But I am wary of using a third party route, and I am unsure of how well it will integrate with the system (Won't other applications, ie Photoshop or MS Word) continue to use the original Finder app, and have all the same issues?

 

If anyone can help me untangle this thorny issue that is Mac-SMB functionality, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

Good to hear about the ul/dl speed being fixed.  This is what I would do to see about the directory listing issue.  Mount 2 file shares from the same server.  The first share mount as cifs and the second share mount as smb.  See which share lists the directories quicker.