REALLY odd issue with SMB CIFS Shares

[pbetancourth]

So here's an odd one. We have some offsite shares created on VNX servers created as just cifs shares. Whenever I mount these shares (which use AD credentials to provide permissions), they mount but show up totally empty, until I drag and drop something into them, or write to them by creating a new folder, which then cause everything to populate in the finder window. I've done just about everything I can think of, but I'm literally at a brick wall with figuring this out. This doesn't happen on any windows shares that are located locally, only those offsite.

ANY insight on this would be very very appreciated.

[corbinmharris]

Running OS X 10.9.x ?
We are seeing issues with are accounting team with EMC NAS fileshares and Excel. Forced those users back to 10.8.5
Apple has not totally fixed the SMB/CIFS issues with NAS devices with 10.9.2

[pbetancourth]

I had tested previously on Mountain Lion and ran into the same issue. I would roll back but since we are doing a new roll out and have quite a few newer model machines in the environment.

[mibrodt]

I have seen this too. It has to do with Finder indexing the folder. For some reason, specifically with NAS storage, Finder seems to have a problem indexing over SMB. There is a way to turn off indexing that can help. I've seen it happen even connecting to an Isilon Enterprise-Grade NAS. SAN connections do not seem to have the same problem. Unfortunately, outside of trying to connect over NFS, or use ExtremeZ EZ-IP to enable AFP, there isn't much I have found that works. It is a bug in Finder.

[tausifkhan]

How about if you disable indexing on SMB shares ?
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

[haircut]

Check your DNS. Reverse zones set up properly?

With network accounts, make sure you have the proper SPNs set for your services or you'll get Kerberos errors. In my experience you don't get much in the way of specifics in the Mac OS X system logs, but doing a packet capture will show you plenty of KDC_ERR_S_PRINCIPAL_UNKOWN errors. CIFS is it's own service class, so the standard HOST or SMB class SPNs won't suffice. I haven't seen the exact behavior you mention, but have seen general slow listing on CIFS shares where with missing SPNs.

You can also try modifying the delayed_ack property. The default value is 3; drop it to 0 or 1 and test. Details here: http://www.digitalgatehouse.com/speed-up-your-mac-os-x-with-smbwindows-servers-255

Regardless, run a packet capture (on both the client and server) and you'll get some more concrete information on the cause.

[donmontalvo]

@mibrodt wrote:

I have seen this too. It has to do with Finder indexing the folder.

It's an old Finder bug, where it enumerates the folder. Third party apps like TotalFinder tame this behavior, is easy to deploy and manage, and isn't expensive when you buy a volume license. It's duct tape but brings relief until Apple fixes this regression.

http://totalfinder.binaryage.com

[pbetancourth]

An interesting update to this and I realized I should have included this in the initial post. Whenever we connect over VPN (in office and out of office), we don't encounter any issues. We've begun to think it might be "opslock" related since it doesn't play nice with the Cisco Accelerators. The VPN connection doesn't cause this issue at all.

@donmontalvo][/url I tested the TotalFinder plugin (great plugin by the way) but the issue persists when connecting over non VPN.

I have also disabled indexing.