All right, Mac experts, let's talk SMB.

[vbuggy]

Is there anything I can do to have it suck less on a Mac?

Over the years I've searched around and asked but it's generally been shrugged shoulders, even before the rewrite. Honestly, I don't see how you can even begin to call any Mac 'pro' - even with the shiny form-over-function-hardware excepted - without this working acceptably first.

It's so slow for example that it's caused me (recoverable, thankfully) data loss in some situations where I thought a folder was empty and deleted it. Nope, it was just that the Mac was too slow in displaying the contents. This goes for both SMB and SMB2 hosts. And once you start squirting serious amounts of data, speeds lag well behind what a comparable Windows workstation can throughput.

I haven't done a giant amount of testing recently but in many ways I think it's still slower than before the rewrite, where OS X had I believe an ancient version of Samba.

Maybe - and I'm pulling maybes out of my ass here - there's some third party card with whizzo drivers that work well. I dunno. Anything?

 

[GWestphal]

Can you provide hardware details?

What two computers were you connecting? What type of network?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's a good idea to wait for the little spinny thingy that means "loading" to stop spinning before you decide a folder is empty.

My experience with Macs and file servers has basically been, "OS X doesn't like file servers. SMB Sucks, but Appleshare sucks worse." But to make a positive contribution to the thread, I ran some benchmarks.

Anyway, keeping in mind that this is just my crappy wifi, not a hard-wired network:

SMB/CIFS:

NFS:

AppleShare:

Kinda funny - AFP couldn't even handle the Lock/Unlock test, it just skipped it. Use NFS if you like things that don't suck.

And yes, most of the network stuff in the house is cat-themed. Deal with it.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I do not have a fix, but will definitely also vouch that SMB2 shares and Apple shares are just awful on my 15" rMBP. It's pretty funny that even my old Windows Vista Core 2 Duo laptop is substantially faster at navigating my CIFS shares than my rMBP. I haven't really tried any fixes as I can't find anything that seems firmly ground in evidence. I haven't changed anything on my SMB server, because honestly, SMB is fantastic on everything (Linux, Windows machines) *except* for OS X in my Network. Can't figure out anything to do for it.

 

[Slug]

I have the same problem with server 2012 and my Mac mini. No solution though.

 

[MrColin]

I have the same problem with server 2012 and my Mac mini. No solution though.

I think [windows] server 2012 can serve nfs.

 

[vbuggy]

Can you provide hardware details?

What two computers were you connecting? What type of network?

Any Mac in current production, and any from the last three years at least. The situation is the same from the Mini right up to the 'Pro'.

And as I alluded, all recent (recent as in anything in the last ten years) OS versions with the post-rewrite (Lion) versions being particularly egregious.

Hosts - again, anything from a Linux NAS talking SMB / SMB2 to a Windows server. It's a fairly universal issue.

LAN - never wireless when I'm actually complaining about this issue, with Wifi it becomes obviously a more nuanced issue so I don't do stuff that would require timely SMB responses over wifi - well, not on a Mac at least.

 

[vbuggy]

It's a good idea to wait for the little spinny thingy that means "loading" to stop spinning before you decide a folder is empty.

Dude, I'm not that dum... I'm not a Mac-first user, so the obvious stuff you can assume has been covered.

The problem is actually there as well if you try it with large folders, see - that there is no indication that the folder parsing is still ongoing.

 

[smackababy]

I don't know if this is part of the problem, but doesn't MS develop SMB? I believe Apple only fairly recently started supporting it. Could be their implementation is crap.

 

[Eug]

In Mavericks, the default is SMB2. However, apparently their implementation is crappy, since as soon as Mavericks came out a lot of people started having problems with SMB on their NASes. This was corrected not by Apple changing their SMB2 implementation, but by 3rd parties changing the way they supported Macs.

I haven't had any issues with AFP though, and AFP is required anyway if you want to use Time Machine.

Ironically though, I get much better support for my NAS on my Mac than I do on my Windows 7 machine. I frequently have to reboot my Windows machine for it to see my NAS over SMB.

 

[Celeryman]

Mavericks SMB support is horrible. I have been trying to help the folks at my wife's office with their Mac/Windows Server file share environment. OS X drops connections (SMB/CIFS and SMB2) like hotcakes. Some of the machines in the office disconnect all the time and their is no rhyme or reason. I've been contemplating trying this: http://www.x2416.com/2012/06/samba-on-osx-lion-server.html