MacOs Catalina QNAP connectivity

[Thresherinc]

OS: MacOS Catalina (10.15.2) Although it's been happening with each iteration of Catalina
NAS model: TS-853A
Firmware: 4.4.1.1146
Network Setup: All 4 ports teamed to a single IP address - Balance-alb (Adaptive Load Balancing)
AFP/SMB/NFSv2/v3/v4 enabled.
Disk bays Fully populated - WD Red disks.
RAID config: RAID-6

Time Machine - works for the most part, occasionally I'll get a backup failed, but when retried the backup will succeed.

The issue is in mounted drives, randomly during the day the QNAP will disconnect from the Mac, when a reconnect is tried it will not reconnect and needs a Forced Relaunch of Finder.

Whilst it's definitely something to do with the interaction between Catalina and QNAP, 3 other macs (1 High Sierra and 2 Mojave) all connect and hold their connection fine, I was wondering if anyone else here had come across a similar issue?

If anyone else has any ideas I'd be happy to try them.

Apple support were no help at all, had the guy on the end of the phone scratching his head and blaming QNAP, frankly I think they monkeyd with file system permissioning and it's messed something up.

Cheers in advance.

[Bob Zelin]

yup - this is Apple SMB. It does not happen with AFP. And it never happens with Win 10 computers. 99% of my clients are on Mac, and this random disconnect has been happening long before macOS 10.15.2.

Apple will never be any support to you. Before QNAP, I was doing nothing but Mac Servers up until macOS 10.12.6. Apple will NEVER EVER EVER admit to a problem. When the iMac Pro first came out, the 10G ports were constantly disconnecting. Sonnet had just released the Sonnet Solo 10G, which is a thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptor. I would plug those in, and they would NEVER disconnect - even though it used the same Aquantia AQC-107 chip and driver native to the macOS operating system (since macOS 10.13.6). These days, when I see this issue on iMac Pro's, I use the QNAP QNA-T310G1T. I have NOT seen any issues with the new
2019 Mac Pro 10G ports.

You did not say exactly what computer you have, running 10.15.2. My suggestion - try AFP, and try a third party 10G adaptor from QNAP/Sonnet/Promise.

Bob Zelin

[torch1]

Are you doing TM backups over SMB or AFP? Bob Z. states that it is SMB...did I miss something?
If SMB, how do you mount it - smb://User@Server/share?
I have 2 Macs both on latest Catalina with QTS 4.4.1 and use SMB for everything - very solid.
AFP is slowly being deprecated by Apple since OS 10.9 in favor of SMB....I wouldn't recommend that. Nor would I recommend a different NIC/adaptor until you have eliminated potential network issues. Wireshark?

[Bob Zelin]

here is a report from Studio Network Solutions (a competitor or QNAP) on their findings with Catalina -
https://support.studionetworksolutions. ... S-products

LumaForge is reporting the same thing. Like I said - I have been dealing with hundreds of customers who get random disconnects from Apple computers since 10.13, so this is
nothing new for me.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251102946

http://www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro ... n-calalina


Bob Zelin

[torch1]

Let's not jump to conclusions - OP did not state how he connects for TM backups or mounts. And not everyone has a different NIC they can try.
Let's try to isolate the issue that ThresherInc has experienced first. Issues that others on the internet may or may not have anything to do with this one.

[schelomo]

The OSX Catalina update has created issues with connecting via the SMB protocol. The solution I found was to prevent the NAS from using SMB entirely and force it to use AFP. This will mess up connecting to your NAS from non-Apple devices, but you can try just enabling AFP (without disabling SMB) and only using that from a Mac.

Firstly, you need to disable SMB and enable AFP.

* Go to Control Panel > Network & File Services > Win/Mac/NFS
* Under “Microsoft Networking”, uncheck “Enable file service for Microsoft networking”
* Under “Apple Networking”, check both “Enable AFP” and “DHX2 authentication support”
* Click “Apply”

Secondly, you want to modify the Bonjour services so the NAS is only discoverable as an AFP device.

* Go to Control Panel > Network & File Services > Service Discovery > Bonjour
* Uncheck the “SAMBA” box
* Make sure the “AFP” box is checked
* Click “Apply”

NOTE:
If your OSX keychain contains your NAS login/password associated with an SMB connection, you will need to remove it. Only save your login/password associated with the AFP connection.

* Open the “Keychain Access” application in OSX
* Search for the IP address of your NAS (probably 192.168.something)
* Delete the saved password

[Bob Zelin]

Hello Schelomo -
with all of that said, and with all the known issues - I still have 95% of my macOS clients connect to QNAP and Synology systems with SMB 3.0, and you know what - it works. Does it occasionally disconnect during the day - absolutely. But with Apple constantly threatening that they are going to discontinue AFP (and AFP will no longer connect to any APFS formatted volume), I would rather see people get random disconnects occasionally, as opposed to being forced to switch to SMB, and they have trouble reading many of their folders. Don't believe me - try putting in some special characters into a folder name while creating in AFP. Now dismount and remount in AFP. You will see what happens right away. You either get "gibberish" or a "?" where the folder name is supposed to be on the Mac desktop. You can see it properly in QNAP File Station, but not on the Mac. So you run that risk. I am actually surprised that AFP is still working (but then, I was surprised how long they let FCP 7 live).

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Hello -
I am writing this on April 15th, 2020.
I may have an Apple fix for the random disconnects, if you are running macOS 10.15 and using a QNAP.
I will do this fix for you for free, if you are interested. If it works, I will document it here on the QNAP user forums.
contact me directly at
bobzelin@icloud.com
I will use www.teamviewer.com to remote into your Mac and run the fix. We will see if this resolves the problem.
Bob Zelin

[jasonwoerner]

Hey, Bob "I will remote into your computer" Zelin,

I'm wondering if you could perhaps reveal your "fix" to this forum without those experiencing the issue having to let a stranger have complete access to their computer. We can evaluate its efficacy on our own, thank you. Understand? Otherwise I report your post as phishing.

[jasonwoerner]

In my case, the QNAP SMB shares are dismounting after several days. It's hard to determine the trigger. I can remount right away. Also, the dismounts happen on one Mac and not another. It's a Mac issue, not a NAS issue (probably). And it could be based on the activity of the mounted share (heavy use on one machine and not on another).

I started seeing this issue when I switched to a more modern SMB version (2.x or above). I have yet to lower that back to 1.x.
I'm also using jumbo frames, so wanted to throw that out there. I did not experience issues until after I implemented them.

While it could be easy to point to one of these things as the cause, I haven't been able to prove it yet. And additional changes such as Mac OS X patches have also occurred. So just throwing this data into this thread so others can benefit.

[dolbyman]

Hey, Bob "I will remote into your computer" Zelin,

I'm wondering if you could perhaps reveal your "fix" to this forum without those experiencing the issue having to let a stranger have complete access to their computer. We can evaluate its efficacy on our own, thank you. Understand? Otherwise I report your post as phishing.

Maybe he wants to test it first .. understand ?

Reporting a long term active member for phishing will only make you look stupid .. understand ? smh

[jasonwoerner]

If it is common to allow even active members complete control of your computer to "test something" then I apologize to this forum. If it is common to post that you have information that you don't want to post, then I apologize.

As someone who works in IT, any forum post asking for access to your computer to do "something" they won't tell you is not to be trusted. If this forum trusts Bob because of history I'm not aware of, okay. But the fact remains his post contains several red flags, so react as you see fit.

[dolbyman]

Then wait for Bob to publish his solution or contact him (website in his signature)

My wild guess, most of us here work in IT and are not professional gardeners (maybe I am wrong)

[Bob Zelin]

ok - here we go - May 18th, 2020
No disasters so far, so this is how you avoid macOS Catalina disconnects from your QNAP (or any other NAS server)

in terminal on your macOS 10.15 Mac, type this in -
nvram boot-args
you will get an error message.

Now copy and paste this line into terminal
sudo nvram boot-args="serverperfmode=1 $(nvram boot-args 2>/dev/null | cut -f 2-)"

hit return, it will ask you to enter your admin password. When you enter it, you will not see anything on the screen (so don't make a typing error).
Hit return, and reboot your Mac

now open terminal, and once again - type in
nvram boot-args
you will now see this -
boot-args serverperfmode=1

that's it. You will no longer have disconnects to your QNAP from macOS Catalina.

Bob Zelin
ps - this was written by Apple (not me) - I don't know why this is a "secret" and engineering has not informed their own tech support about this.

[jasonwoerner]

FYI, Bob, I have done that (set server mode to on) on my Mac mini and it didn't prevent disconnects entirely.
My current situation is that I've been without disconnects since I forced usage of SMB 1.x, rather than 2.x or 3.