MacOS: SMB shares only slow on certain Mac devices, Windows is instant

[blade316]

Hey peeps!

Nowwwwww I already know there have been a number of threads already about this, however this problem seems to really have no solid answer or solution. So please don't lash out for a new post about it lol 🙂'

 

I'm going to break it down as simply as I can.

 

Unraid 6.11.0

Intel Core i7

32GB RAM

Array size: 58TB

# of Drives: 8

Parity drives: 1

NIC: Intel Quad Port Gigabit NIC

Average Overall Server Load: 10-15%

Network

Switch: Standard Gigabit Managed switch, no fancy config

Wireless: Nothing fancy, standard N & AC wifi

 

Dockers:

Nothing fancy, not taxing the hardware at all

 

Devices

Mac Mini 2012 (10.15 Catalina)

Mac Mini M1 2021 (13.2.1 Ventura)

Macbook Pro M2 2022 (13.2.1 Ventura)

Multiple Windows 10 machines

All machines connected to network via Ethernet & Wireless

 

Affected share type: SMB

Is NFS also affected: Sort of, no where near as bad as SMB

Symptoms:

Both Mac Mini 2012 and Mac Mini M1

 - Loading any SMB share takes forever, regardless of how many folders and files are in the share

 - On average around 5-6 minutes

 - Copy any files whether it be big single files or lots of small files, goes at around 1MB/s, when it should be around 80MB/s

 

Troubleshooting:

 - Tested iperf from both macs to unraid - maxes out gigbit connection around 975MB/s, so its not a connection issue

 - Changed out ethernet cables

 - Disabled wireless

 - Changed switch ports

 - Reset NICs on Mac Mini's

 - Created brand new test shares with test data

 

Additional info:

So to make things more confusing, the Macbook M2 does not have this issue at all. I can access all of the same unraid SMB shares via ethernet or wireless and they load instantly. I can copy files to and from, and it maxes out the connection. Windows 10 machines also have no issues with the same SMB shares and max out the connection.

 

If I use SSH on the Mac Mini devices, its a lot faster, however still not like the M2 or the Windows machines, only achieving around 40MB/s transfer speed.

 

I also have a TrueNAS box, so to throw another spanner in the works, the Mac Mini devices do not have any issues accessing SMB shares on the TrueNAS box. I have set up the TrueNAS SMB shares to be the same as the UnRAID SMB shares for making troubleshooting more accurate.

 

This issue has been going on Unraid for as long as I can remember, and until I got my Macbook M2 recently, I just figured that was something I would just have to deal with using Mac with UnRAID. However, the Macbook M2 working properly blows that theory out of the water. I have tried all sorts of different SMB config options etc, nothing works.

 

The key here is the Macbook M2 is not affected, the Mac Mini's work fine with SMB on TrueNAS, so something in UnRAID is not quite right.

 

Keen to get some insight from people and maybe even the devs as to why SMB seems to be troublesome on UnRAID for MacOS?

 

TIA

 

Daniel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DivideBy0]

I absolutely give up on UnRAID SMB with Macs starting with the TimeMachine.  Good luck but UnRAID does a terrible job at SMB when it comes to Macs.  Not sure if Unraid or Apple fault but I just give up. My Windows and Linux boxes works fine except the Apple gear. 

[blade316]

@johnwhicker

 

So just an update on my issue, I recently started migrating from XFS to ZFS. This didn't result in any changes to the Mac SMB issue, however I am in a much better place using ZFS instead of XFS for my pools. I have only changed my general cache, docker pool, and VM pool which are on SSD media over to ZFS. Next is to work out how I am going to migrate my array to ZFS.

 

Anyway, during this I also decided to test out Disk Shares, I have never used them before (except for the cache pools), and wouldn't you know it, when accessing a disk share from Macs over SMB is instant, same as windows.

 

What this tells us is that there is something in FUSE that is causing Mac SMB to bug out. 

 

Now at the moment because my array is still set up in the old traditional xfs (6.11.x and before, without pool functionality) I only get each disk surfaced as a share, not the pool of disks itself. So once I work out how I want to migrate the data from my array, I will be creating a pool (maybe multiple) for my array disks, which will then be surfaced as a disk share. Accessing a disk share takes FUSE out of the equation, and should hopefully fix this problem moving forward. Now that I have discovered this, I'm wondering if this was also why UnRAID NFS shares didn't work very well on MacOS either, as they would have also be going through FUSE for this.

 

I encourage you to test this yourself as it looks like thats the go.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

[PhotoDK]

Hi Blade316

Thanks for the info about 'fuse' maybe being the issue.

I will for sure, see if it's help on my system.

Let's hope Unraid will fix this issue, MANY of us uses mac's and have this annoying problem.

 

[Nano]

Mac OS SMB performance is shockingly bad still, I spun up a Truenas VM on a 2.5gbe Link and it's double the speed of my 10gbe link via Unraid. Its really pushing me to migrate but its so much work