SMB or NFS for my Use Cases?

Questions about using NAS on Mac OS.
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lmarceg
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Posts: 26
Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2019 4:44 pm

SMB or NFS for my Use Cases?

Post by lmarceg »

Dear users,
I need your advice and your experience to understand the best path I should follow.

I have a TS231-P which I initially connected over wire to a Late 2009 iMac running Sierra, and Samba was terribly slow in showing directories and also in throughput.
I then moved to NFS, which worked quite well, though with some drawbacks.

I have just recently bought an M1 iMac running Big Sur and I thought SMB was the right choice to take, but...
I'll tell you what I want to achieve, what I could and couldn't do so far, and then you'll have all the info you need to suggest me the best answer.

1) I would like to be able to delete files on the NAS and send them to the Bin.
a) NFS doesn't let you do so: is there any option?
b) with SMB, finder still complains about the file being removed permanently, though in reality they are moved to the Network bin. Well, ok, this is temporary deletion but integration is zero. Is it really like that? Nothing can be improved? To put the files back, I need to do it manually, remembering which user did the deletion!

2) I would like to see creation timestamp for my files in Finder
a) with NFS, I need to use Modified Date because Creation Date is not supported. Maybe NFSv4 has done some improvements? It's a pain to have to change all the columns in Finder....
b) with SMB, it's working well

3) I would like to index the NAS and use spotlight to find things
a) with Sierra, this was not possible despite I tried so many times, even indexing manually. I ended up using a 3rd party application, but it's tedious and doesn't auto-reindex the folders
b) Does NFS or SMB provide any indexing options? Which of the two protocols? This would be rather important

4) I would like to see my tags again
a) with NFS, the already existing tags disappeared, but if I add new ones, they are maintained. Is there any configuration that I can apply to see also older tags? Or maybe NFSv4 can help?
b) SMB supports xattr metadata and actually, I can see the old ones

5) I need some permissions on different folders
a) SMB: I initially tried with Advanced Folder Permission, but I could never make it work. I have tried again lately, but nothing works the way I want. Actually, I would like the majority of the folders to be RO for some users, and just some few subfolders to be RW. But according to the manual and to QNAP support, the shared root folder must be RW for everyone and therefore, my UC will never work
b) NFS: I have manually changed ownership and group for my folders and added the setgid bit so that, at least, I will have RW capabilities everywhere and the other components will only write where I want them to write. My goal would be to give a specific space for every single user and SMB would somehow be an easier choice. I understood I can play with secondary groups but the Mac already starts with 16 secondary groups and I believe this is a limitation. However, this configuration is all manual and it's rather complicated to accomodate MacOS and QNAP ids.

6) I would like an easy mount
a) I have seen that if I mount a NAS share in a dedicated folder (via mount -t nfs), then all the other users can access it
b) with SMB, I have had to mount the same share with different credentials in different folders. Since 4 people use the Mac, I have four accounts that stay open and we switch from one account to the other whenever needed. I can't find a better way, but mounting four shares looks like a mess. Is there a better solution?

As you see, I have seen some pros and cons for both protocols, but maybe there are some tricks that may enable or improve features on either NFS or SMB that I am not aware of. I have done so many manual changes that I am not afraid to experiment, but I need you to guide me towards one direction.

Sorry for this long message and I am awaiting your inputs!
Luca
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