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John McC
Asked: 2011-04-12 15:05:03 +0800 CST

How to fix OSX client to Windows share hangs?

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I have 2 x MacBook Pro's (OSX 10.6.7) that access files stored on a 64-bit and a 32-bit Windows 7 PC.

The MBP clients can connect to the Windows shares and transfer files with no problem.

However, after a day or so, the shares become unresponsive. If you click on the server name under "SHARED" in Finder, you get a "Connecting..." status message. Once this happens neither PC can be accessed.

In Terminal, the network shares show as mounted. If you try to access the mounts, e.g. "ls /Volumes/data", the command hangs and cannot be ctrl/C'd.

The shares cannot be unmounted, eg. sudo umount -f /Volumes/data" hangs as well.

The only way to restore access to the Windows computers is to reboot the MBP's.

Any suggestions on how to prevent this happening, diagnose the cause, or restore service without a reboot would be much appreciated.

windows mac-osx server-message-block cifs

3 Answers

  1. Nope, Apple is replacing Samba in 10.7 because it's GPLv3. (And Apple is avoiding GPL like plague. See, they're also slowly moving away from GCC).

    Now, to answer the original question, it seems like the connection is "simply" lost. And as the mounting is done at the kernel level, it can completly hang the machine.

    I think your issue comes from a sudden loss of network connectivity. Here's what I would look for :

    • A change of IP address (server or client) : maybe a DHCP lease is expiring ?
    • Maybe some form of WiFi issue if you're over WiFi
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  2. This is probably a bug in samba, Apple is replacing it in 10.7 for just these reasons.

    That being said I would assume your connection is dropping and not being re-created. Take a look at this post where users are having similar issues: https://superuser.com/questions/144327/mac-os-cant-connect-to-smb-shares-after-sleep

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  3. What do you get when you view shares using smbclient [share] -L in Terminal? Does it hang there as well? Have you checked event viewer on the Windows 7 machine? From my last experiences with configuring SMB for OS X, I had to change some SMB properties on the Windows end to get everything working well.

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