Mac OS X Slow Finder Performance to SMB

[dpodblood]

Hey All,

Hopefully this is the correct subforum. Been having a problem with Mac's in our office connecting to SMB shares for some time now. Folder navigation is extremely slow. Inside the office folders can take several seconds to open, and when connected via our VPN this can increase to 2+ minutes. The same shares will open instantaneously in Windows (even on the same hardware). The file server is Server 2003. Mac's are a mix of Lion and Mountain Lion (though the issue also existed in Snow Leopard and earlier).

I have tried several suggestions in the following thread including enabling internet connection sharing, and creating a nsmb.conf file with some choice parameters configured. None of it has resolved the issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2172049?start=30&tstart=0

I have isolated this issue down to being an issue with Finder itself. Using MUcommander or other 3rd party file browsers completely fixes the issue. Does anyone have any idea what's causing this issue, and if so how to fix it?

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Have you checked this? https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/macenterprise/mDvpOm-_WP4

Looks like some good ideas on what causes it

 

[dpodblood]

Have you checked this? https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/macenterprise/mDvpOm-_WP4

Looks like some good ideas on what causes it

Yeah I've taken a look through that thread and tried some of their suggestions as well. Removing DS_Store from folders seemed to speed up things a bit, but still not to an acceptable level. I also tried changing the ACK setting to no avail.

I even installed the Extreme-Z IP trial on our file server and had a conference call with the company to go through our set-up. While it did help with download/upload speeds it made no difference as far as folder navigation is concerned.

 

[CubanlB]

How many shares are we talking about?

Could you just directly mount the shares and cut finder out? Are you trying to use credentials other than the ones you are using to log into the system?

Just mounting the shares is a work around but it could be easy enough. If the issue is wide spread enough someone might be interested in setting up nfs from the server 2003 machine (I know 2008 can do this and I think the unix support is in 2003 as well).

Edit: I'm dumb, Didn't read. It's not just the initial lookup you're having an issue with just over all performance... Hmmm...

I can ask a friend who does support for a school district with boatloads of macs how they tuned their smb and get back to the thread though.

I dont know the root cause but possibly some additional smb tuning could be used to great effect.

I have used some resources from https://calomel.org/ in reference to tuning sambas performance on BSD servers, not sure about client tuning though.

Good Luck, I have a special burning passionate anger for mac support forums, as the answer provided is usually to just use a different paid product for some lackluster OSX feature that should be working.

 

[dpodblood]

How many shares are we talking about?

Could you just directly mount the shares and cut finder out? Are you trying to use credentials other than the ones you are using to log into the system?

Just mounting the shares is a work around but it could be easy enough. If the issue is wide spread enough someone might be interested in setting up nfs from the server 2003 machine (I know 2008 can do this and I think the unix support is in 2003 as well).

Edit: I'm dumb, Didn't read. It's not just the initial lookup you're having an issue with just over all performance... Hmmm...

I can ask a friend who does support for a school district with boatloads of macs how they tuned their smb and get back to the thread though.

I dont know the root cause but possibly some additional smb tuning could be used to great effect.

I have used some resources from https://calomel.org/ in reference to tuning sambas performance on BSD servers, not sure about client tuning though.

Good Luck, I have a special burning passionate anger for mac support forums, as the answer provided is usually to just use a different paid product for some lackluster OSX feature that should be working.

Yeah I have been working on this issue for some time now, and the 2 most common answers have been:

1) Bought Pathfinder (Finder alternative)
2) Couldn't resolve... went back to Windows.

Thanks for your suggestions. I will take a look as see if any of that helps.