Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 24 Nov 2019 15:01:01 -0500
From:      Chris Gordon <freebsd@theory14.net>
To:        Andrew Reilly <areilly@bigpond.net.au>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Long-shot: repeatable macOS samba share unmounting during Lightroom import
Message-ID:  <DC2A61AD-2CF5-46A2-87A5-F22C68CA1BD0@theory14.net>
In-Reply-To: <28504691-D08B-483B-B4C5-CA47F2C523ED@bigpond.net.au>
References:  <28504691-D08B-483B-B4C5-CA47F2C523ED@bigpond.net.au>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
WARNING:  Mostly deviating from a FreeBSD specific discussion.

> On Nov 23, 2019, at 9:33 PM, Andrew Reilly <areilly@bigpond.net.au> =
wrote:
>=20
> Hi all,
>=20
> This is a long-shot question, because it involves a lot of moving
> pieces, most of which are opaque commercial, poorly documented
> things.  Never the less, it does involve FreeBSD-stable as one of
> the players, and my experience over the years has been that FreeBSD
> folk are both knowledgeable and helpful, so here's hoping.  Herwith
> my tale of computer-induced irritation:
>=20
> The story takes place at home, where the FreeBSD system in question
> is a local network file server.  The FreeBSD tracks -STABLE every
> week.  It boots from ZFS on NVM flash and has four 4TB Hitachi ATA
> drives in a RAIDZ.  The current motherboard has a Ryzen 7 1700
> 8-core locked at 3GHz by the bios to avoid a problem of going to
> sleep permanently by failing to come out of some sort of low-power
> state.  It has 32G RAM.  It has intel "PRO/1000 PCI-Express Network
> Driver" network connected to a simple gigabit switch, with both
> IPv4 and IPv6 configured and working.
>=20
> The other protagonist in this tale, also connected to the gigabit
> LAN, is an iMac running current-Catalina on APFS flash, mounting
> three filesystems over SMB, from Samba 4.10.10.  After appropriate
> Samba tweaking this seems to be at least as reliable as it ever was
> with netatalk or NFS, and apparently better supported by Apple.
>=20
> I keep my Lightroom Classic catalogue on the mac's local (flash)
> drive, but the photo storage is on the network.  The Import Backups
> directory is also on (a different) network drive.  I use Lightroom's
> Import function to copy photos off SD cards using the mac's built-in
> SD card reader and register with the catalogue.  So far so normal,
> I think.
>=20
> The problem arose about ?three or four? months ago: could be
> coincident with OS or Lightroom upgrades, I can't remember, but I
> haven't changed anything about the setup, configuration or workflow.
> Now, every single time Lightroom does an import, while it's doing
> the first scan of the SD card to identify photos that it's seen
> before, all three of the Samba filesystems unmount from the mac,
> silently.  I can find no record of error in any of the logs,
> suggesting that the system thinks that it happened deliberately.
> Needless to say, this throws out the import workflow, although it
> manages to pick itself up OK if I just re-mount everything.
>=20
> Anyone have any similar experiences?  Any thoughts of where I could
> poke it to find out why this might be happening?  It feels like a
> time-out bug somewhere, but (a) there is no complaint, and (b) the
> network traffic is light at the time.  Needless to say Apple
> documentation is useless.
>=20
> Probably another good reason to find an alternative to Lightroom...

Other than the hardware specifics, I have the same exact workflow and =
same players involved.

Maybe an odd question, but how are you mounting the SMB shares?

Since updating to Catalina, I've found lots of problems dealing with SMB =
using the Finder window and the items under the Locations side bar.  For =
instance:
- Mount a share.  At some point overnight when nothing is using it, the =
share is unmounted.  I can't find anything in the logs to say why, when, =
what, etc.  Just unmounted.
- With a fresh start of the Finder process and I can access the SMB =
server/shares.  After some time, activity, something, I only get =
"Connection Failed" and can't access anything.  What's really crazy, is =
that I can't even unmount mounted shares from under Locations when it =
gets in this state (I can unmount via right click on the desktop item, =
CLI, etc).  I see the share with the eject button, but just get useless =
error message (if anything).
- Killing (killall -HUP Finder) makes everything work again for a short =
bit.

If I mount the share via the Finder menubar (Go -> Connect to Server) =
everything works and is rock solid.  Mounts with no problems, no mystery =
unmount, etc.  I did test a Lightroom import and had no SMB issues when =
the shared where mounted via the menu bar.

I also store all of my music on the server and access it via SMB mounts. =
 I've noticed that the Apple Music app will automatically mount the SMB =
share when I hit play.  Unlike iTunes, I assume it's more aware of the =
filesystem and mounts.  Even with the Finder window off in la-la land, =
the auto-mount by Music works fine. Now if this behavior could only be =
exposed to every other app....

My completely un-researched guess is that when they removed the NetBIOS =
support (one of the changes in Catalina), some bug was introduced or =
uncovered causing the problematic behavior.  My guess ins based on the =
assumption that the Finder window (not sure what to call it) displays =
all of the network browsing and discovery and  is the code path that was =
impacted by the NetBIOS change.  Any mount tied in with this path gets =
impacted, and when this goes south, it takes the mounts with it.  =
Mounting via other means doesn't bring in the associated path.

I will check each new OS X update to see if this issue goes away.  Until =
then, I just mount my shares via "Go- > 'Connect to Server'".   Also =
note that you can re-enable NetBIOS support in Catalina =
(https://medium.com/@gobinathm/how-to-access-smb-printer-shares-in-macos-c=
atalina-10-15-17ea91d2c10b).  I've not done nor tested that.

Hopefully a minor tweak to how you mount the SMB share will save you the =
huge hassle of changing out tools.

Hope that helps.

Chris=



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?DC2A61AD-2CF5-46A2-87A5-F22C68CA1BD0>