Is SMB broken in Ventura?

Question

Level 1

10 points

Is SMB broken in Ventura?

Seems like the current implementation of SMB (Samba) client is broken in macOS Ventura. I am running 13.5.1 on a brand new Mac Studio Max.

By "broken", I mean that the performance and stability is really bad. I have been struggling with this for a while now, and will summarize some findings here.

And yes, I have tried Googling and tried various settings, flags etc - but nothing gives me the required stability and speed (disabling .DS_Store etc...)

NFS is working much better and is very stable. Now that AFP is gone, and NFS is not developed any further, then SMB is the only future protocol for file sharing on Mac. The state of the current implementation seems to be extremely bad and not something to rely on.

Performance/Speed copying to SMB share

I created a new ZFS pool using two SSD disks on an Unraid server.

I then mounted this using SMB from my Mac. I copied apprx. 3000 pictures with size 20-30 MB per file.

The speed started about 80 MB/s but then went down to 25 MB/s and then was consistent on that speed. I saw that network was not being utilized at all - maybe 100-150 mbps out of 1 gbps.

I then mounted the same pool using NFS from my Mac. Did the same copying. The speed was now consistent 115 MB/s and it used all available network capacity (1 gbps).

Folder browsing on SMB share

When trying to browse folders on SMB share with many files in, it takes a very long time to display the files. NFS is much much faster.

Finder copying from SMB share

When trying to copy folders from SMB share with many subfolder and files, the copy gets stuck on "Preparing to copy"

Lightroom import to SMB share

When trying to import pictures into Lightroom where the destination for the photos are a SMB share, the whole Mac freezes and then restarts with some error generated. A total crash there.

Posted on Sep 6, 2023 12:15 AM

Reply

Answer 1

May 4, 2024 7:08 PM in response to el_sandokan

I completely agree. It is 100% UNUSABLE at this point and it's absolutely inexcusable. I just connected with SFTP and deleted a directory of 20K files in 1 second. I couldn't even get a listing in 45 minutes on MacOS. My attempts to delete with Finder were impossible. I let it run over night and it went through about 1000 files.

This is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE. I am so tired of this constantly declining quality tool for an ever increasing cost.

Reply

Answer 2

ziggy99 Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 6, 2023 4:09 AM in response to Barney-15E

Yes, it seems that it is very buggy. But what are the alternatives? SMB is kind of the standard now for file sharing. I guess the alternative is to use some local disk array solution via Thunderbolt or similar.

Reply

Answer 3

etresoft

Level 9

55,458 points

Sep 6, 2023 7:21 AM in response to ziggy99

ziggy99 wrote:

I guess the alternative is to use some local disk array solution via Thunderbolt or similar.

The standard these days is file sync software like iCloud, DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. I'm not saying that is a good or ideal alternative, just that it is now standard.

There are still a lot of old-school small-business types that use traditional file sharing. But there's a big problem there. Even if we assume Apple's SMB was perfect, it's still file sharing. It is only as secure as the weakest client or login password. File sharing is how ransomware makes its money. You don't need malware. You don't need hackers. You just need one person with privileges who can be easily fooled. As organization start to grow in size, the likelihood of there being one of those people quickly reaches 100%.

More security savvy organizations, or those that are recovering from ransomware, will instead choose web-based content-management solutions.

For people who have a Linux server and can switch between NFS and SMB, why not just use NFS? But even here, you should really consider practical issues. 115 MB/s is high-quality mechanical HDD speed. Any decent USB 3 SSD is 10x faster. The internal SSD on your Mac Studio is 5x faster on top of that. So it's work really looking at your workflow and what you are trying to accomplish. Old-school networking, even with 1 GB or 10 GB networking, just can't keep up.

Reply

Answer 4

ziggy99 Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 6, 2023 11:30 PM in response to etresoft

As a photographer with x TBs of data, online is no option for me. I do backup to online locations, but for daily work I need "all photos" to be available immediately - because images can be up to 60 MB each, it is no option to download them on demand either. They must be browsable.

With these huge amounts of data, it is not possible to have everything locally on my Mac either. My workflow is that I import it to my local Mac, but move it to my Unraid server after a month or so, and the data is available there if needed. All previews are kept locally on my Mac, so speed in Lightroom is fine working towards Unraid with 115 MB/s.

But it is really a surprise to me that there are currently no stable SMB network file sharing implementation available on Mac. I will stick with NFS for now - since this seems ok, but with SMB being "the future", it surprises me. I might consider moving to some "local NAS" instead that is directly connected through Thunderbolt.

Reply

Answer 5

Mar 6, 2024 1:57 PM in response to ziggy99

same here. It takes 15 minutes to list files off my NAS using Finder. I invested hours and hours in this, tried every single suggestion (smb.conf, nsmb.conf, no signing, no cache, no DS_Store, etc etc etc)

I have completely given up. I've been forced to connect with my Windows11 PC to manage files stored in my NAS. When connecting from my Mac I need to me sure there are no more than 100 files inside the working directory.

Reply