• MacOS Optimization

    limetech

    By limetech

      • Minor

    Starting with 6.11.0-rc5 we have added some features to help us figure out the proper mix of SMB settings which will achieve the best performance/functionality with MacOS.  This mainly involves tuning the so-called "fruit" SMB parameters.  Please refer to the Samba "vfs_fruit" doc:

    https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/vfs_fruit.8.html

     

    First you will notice there are Global options and Per-Share options.  The global options are set in /etc/samba/smb.conf file on your server.  All the options are listed near the bottom, and ones which vary from the default setting are uncommented.  I don't think we will need to change these options but if you want to experiment then add your changes to /boot/config/smb-extra.conf file.

     

    Next are the set of per-share options.  These are set in /etc/samba/smb-fruit.conf file on your server.  Again all options are listed there and only the ones which deviate from default are uncommented.

     

    In addition, you may create the file /boot/config/smb-fruit.conf on your flash device and when Samba starts or is restarted, those options will override the options in /etc/samba/smb-fruit.conf.  Thus a good staring point would be to: 

    cp /etc/samba/smb-fruit.conf /boot/config

    and now you can make changes to /boot/config/smb-fruit.conf

    After making a change you can type this command to to restart Samba: 

    samba restart

     

    For any of this to be applied, you first need to ensure that "Settings/SMB/Enhanced macOS interoperability" is set to Yes.  This will tell Unraid OS to include the contents of the smb-fruit.conf file in each share (except for the 'flash' share, see below).

     

    Note: we actually have per-share hidden settings for enabling 'fruit', however from the documentation we read:

    Quote

    Be careful when mixing shares with and without vfs_fruit. OS X clients negotiate SMB2 AAPL protocol extensions on the first tcon, so mixing shares with and without fruit will globally disable AAPL if the first tcon is without fruit.

     

    Thus there is no UI for these settings, instead either all shares or no shares have 'fruit' extensions.  As for the 'flash' share, again from the doc we read:

    Quote

    The module enables alternate data streams (ADS) support for a share, intercepts the OS X special streams "AFP_AfpInfo" and "AFP_Resource" and handles them in a special way. All other named streams are deferred to vfs_streams_xattr which must be loaded together with vfs_fruit.

    (emphasis mine).

     

    They say 'streams_xattr' must be loaded, but later in the doc they talk about options that are incompatible with this.  In addition certain file system types are inherently incompatible, notably FAT and exFAT because they don't support xattr at all...  Hence we can't (or shouldn't) include the 'flash' share in 'fruit' but then if the 'flash' share is first share to be accessed on a Mac client, APPL extensions will be disabled for the duration... Yes this is confusing, maybe best bet is to not export the 'flash' share in MacOS environment.  If it is exported, the 'testparm' command outputs this warning: 

    WARNING: some services use vfs_fruit, others don't. Mounting them in conjunction on OS X clients results in undefined behaviour.

     

    Time machine - if enabled for a share these parameters are automatically added (independent of smb-fruit.conf): 

    fruit:time machine = yes
fruit:time machine max size = SIZE # if "vol size limit" specified

     

    Finally Spotlight - our build of Samba includes spotlight support but only for 'elasticsearch'.  But 'elasticsearch' is not installed in Unraid OS.  In other places on the forum people have expressed success by setting the spotlight backend to 'tracker' - but this requires "gnone tracker" which also is not installed in Unraid OS - so I'm not sure what's going on here.  Nevertheless, you can add 'spotlight = on' to the smb-fruit.conf file to play around with this.

     

    Please limit discussion in this topic to MacOS issues only.

     

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    johnwhicker

    I switched my TimeMachine to an old MacMini with an external drive.  After 6.11.1 upgrade my UnRaid TimeMachine setup went belly up   I am done trying 

    Link to comment
    Jclendineng
    1 hour ago, johnwhicker said:

    I switched my TimeMachine to an old MacMini with an external drive.  After 6.11.1 upgrade my UnRaid TimeMachine setup went belly up   I am done trying 

    That’s not the latest stable though. 6.11.5 is, and time machine has been great with the configs listed in the thread for what it’s worth 

    Link to comment
    kubed_zero
    2 hours ago, Jclendineng said:

    time machine has been great with the configs listed in the thread for what it’s worth 

    I stand by my decision to stick with 6.9.2 until the DEFAULT settings for Unraid's SMB configs work correctly for the BUILT-IN functionality of Time Machine. 6.9.2 did that just fine, and there's no valid excuse in my mind for 6.11 and onwards to not include it. Especially given people have been able to hack their way to something functional. 

    I still challenge Unraid to raise the bar and get Time Machine backups working by default on a fresh install of 6.11/6.12 with zero additional manual config necessary. AKA:

    - Install Unraid to a flash drive
    - Boot, create a one disk no-parity array
    - Create a Time Machine compatible share after enabling macOS optimization in the SMB settings
    - Perform a successful backup
    - Perform successful incremental backups (which is the part that I've not yet seen working correctly)

    Bonus points if Time Machine shares created on 6.9 and earlier can continue to work with 6.11 and onwards. 

    • Upvote 1
    Link to comment
    domidomi
    On 3/16/2023 at 7:23 PM, kubed_zero said:

    I stand by my decision to stick with 6.9.2 until the DEFAULT settings for Unraid's SMB configs work correctly for the BUILT-IN functionality of Time Machine. 6.9.2 did that just fine, and there's no valid excuse in my mind for 6.11 and onwards to not include it. Especially given people have been able to hack their way to something functional. 

    I still challenge Unraid to raise the bar and get Time Machine backups working by default on a fresh install of 6.11/6.12 with zero additional manual config necessary. AKA:

    - Install Unraid to a flash drive
    - Boot, create a one disk no-parity array
    - Create a Time Machine compatible share after enabling macOS optimization in the SMB settings
    - Perform a successful backup
    - Perform successful incremental backups (which is the part that I've not yet seen working correctly)

    Bonus points if Time Machine shares created on 6.9 and earlier can continue to work with 6.11 and onwards. 

    I can do nothing but 100% agree with this. In this world of ubiquitous free/open source software, it's easy to forget that we are actually paying customers for this product. As paying customers, it only makes sense to make certain demands and set some expectations on what we're purchasing.

     

    Make no mistake, I like UnRAID a lot, but this whole thing with letting the customers figure out solutions to bugs in the product they paid for... It's just not right. A NAS software product which doesn't support Time Machine backups out of the box? Again, it's just not right.

    • Like 2
    Link to comment
    manolodf
    On 3/16/2023 at 1:23 PM, kubed_zero said:

    I stand by my decision to stick with 6.9.2 until the DEFAULT settings for Unraid's SMB configs work correctly for the BUILT-IN functionality of Time Machine. 6.9.2 did that just fine, and there's no valid excuse in my mind for 6.11 and onwards to not include it. Especially given people have been able to hack their way to something functional. 

    I still challenge Unraid to raise the bar and get Time Machine backups working by default on a fresh install of 6.11/6.12 with zero additional manual config necessary. AKA:

    - Install Unraid to a flash drive
    - Boot, create a one disk no-parity array
    - Create a Time Machine compatible share after enabling macOS optimization in the SMB settings
    - Perform a successful backup
    - Perform successful incremental backups (which is the part that I've not yet seen working correctly)

    Bonus points if Time Machine shares created on 6.9 and earlier can continue to work with 6.11 and onwards. 

    I also completely agree with this.  I have been fumbling around until I found this post, I went to 6.10.3, had to go back to 6.9.2, but I do want some of the newer unraid features, so I tired yesterday to go to 6.11.5, and again my time machines do not work, when they had been working for a decade since Unraid's beginnings.  I also would prefer to not have to hack my way to get them to work, since it was built in for so so long, and I had a perfect Time Capsule at home for my 4+ macs to backup via timemachine to flawlessly. 

    Link to comment
    manolodf
    On 10/17/2022 at 5:10 PM, limetech said:

    Thank you for your report.  I have TM backups running ok with Monterey (12.6).  At first I thought it was because the share is marked 'public'.  Changed to 'private' and there was some connectivity issues but eventually poked around the TM preferences and got it to work again... so the investigation continues...

    Not sure if it would help diagnose, but I think many of us that have issues have had Unraid for a long time, can you try upgrading from 6.9.2 to a newer version and see if you get the same problems? 

     

    For some reason I have seen a few people in the forums that say they created this time machine on 6.10.3 or above and have something working, so perhaps attempting on an older version then upgrading to see if you can replicate the issues? 

    Link to comment
    Simon Edelmann

    Hi, I hope it‘s okay to join your discussion having issues with TM backups too.

    9 minutes ago, manolodf said:

    Not sure if it would help diagnose, but I think many of us that have issues have had Unraid for a long time

    In my case I only started using Unraid with 6.10, and it never worked reliable. (I have this strange behaviour that TM backups are only working when the CPU of the server is under load.)

     

    12 minutes ago, manolodf said:

    For some reason I have seen a few people in the forums that say they created this time machine on 6.10.3 or above and have something working, so perhaps attempting on an older version then upgrading to see if you can replicate the issues? 

    I‘ve tried that. (Actually made a clean Unraid 6.10.3 installation in order to try that.) The initial backup was (kind of) working. It aborted at ~50%, but after changing some SMB configuration in Unraid it was resumed. Incremental backups though was never working reliable, no matter of the configuration I tried.

    Link to comment
    manolodf
    1 hour ago, Simon Edelmann said:

    Hi, I hope it‘s okay to join your discussion having issues with TM backups too.

    In my case I only started using Unraid with 6.10, and it never worked reliable. (I have this strange behaviour that TM backups are only working when the CPU of the server is under load.)

     

    I‘ve tried that. (Actually made a clean Unraid 6.10.3 installation in order to try that.) The initial backup was (kind of) working. It aborted at ~50%, but after changing some SMB configuration in Unraid it was resumed. Incremental backups though was never working reliable, no matter of the configuration I tried.

    I see, ok so maybe those are few and far between, but I promise you prior to 6.10 TM backups were amazing, I had hourly backups for I believe at least 10yrs, since around 2012 when I got my first mac.  All of a sudden this broke in 6.10 and is still not resolved (I tried 6.11.5, but I am about to revert back to 6.9.2 once again) 

     

    Update:  Downgraded to 6.9.2 and Time Machine Backups working great again instantly upon downgrade, I do not foresee incrementals having an issue either but will update if so.   

    Edited by manolodf
    Updated after downgrade
    Link to comment
    CS01-HS

    I gave up on unraid time machine (I now use a time capsule) so my comment's not based on experience with the recent versions but it seems to me the later samba versions made MacOS less compatible generally – search doesn't work out of the box, folders don't always refresh when their content changes (which sometimes causes fuse errors that take down the array.)

     

    I'd be tempted to blame MacOS but I have an old Raspberry Pi running samba 4.9.5 that works just fine.

    Link to comment
    Simon Edelmann

    Does anybody know if it is possible to install a newer/older version of samba in Unraid?

    I tried to get a precompiled binary for Slackware and used ‚upgradepkg‘ to install it, but when I was running smb commands then I always got „Required file not found“, although the file was there and I could inspect its content via ‚cat‘.

    I would like to try different versions of samba and check if any of those works..

    Link to comment


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