cifs

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  • Did Mavericks kill your SMB network drive access? Here's a fix

    by 
    Mel Martin
    Mel Martin
    10.27.2013

    Among the issues some people have had with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, one of the biggest gotchas was a loss of access to SMB network shares -- the connection many NAS devices (Network attached storage), Windows PCs or Linux servers use to provide file sharing. In my case, I got the double foul. My NAS tried to mount forever and failed; same with a Windows 8 PC on my network. The cause appears to be changes made in the networking stack made by Apple. Apple's SMB2 implementation doesn't work with a lot of SMB2 devices -- even networked drives from Windows machines. [SMB2 is actually used by Mavericks for Mac-to-Mac connectivity, unlike older versions of OS X where AFP was the default. –Ed.] One easy fix involves changing a little bit of text in your server connection URL. Here's how it works: In the Finder, choose the "Go" menu and select "Connect to Server..." (command-K). Type "cifs://yourservername" and hit Return; the server should mount. CIFS (Common Internet File System) is just another name for the SMB protocol, but using it in the server URL forces the Finder to use the older (not broken) SMB1 implementation, rather than the buggy SMB2. It worked for me with both my NAS and my Windows PC, so there's a good chance it will work for you. Apple's Support Boards are filled with users pulling their hair out over this one, so we hope the tip is of use to you. Thanks to Cammodude for the solution here; he also posts a Terminal tip (at your own risk) for permanently forcing Finder to use SMB1 instead of SMB2.

  • How-To: Set up a home file server using FreeNAS

    by 
    John Browning
    John Browning
    02.01.2012

    Ask Engadget: What's the best budget NAS? Kingston Wi-Drive for iOS hits stores today, lets you create your own portable music server for $130 Tilera sees sense in the server wars, puts just 36 cores in its newest processorIn today's digital world we've all got data, and lots of it. Our libraries are also growing rapidly: where you used to get by setting aside a few bookshelves for your books, CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes, we now require untold server space to preserve our beloved media in digitized form. We also want our data to be itinerant, or at least seem that way. That is, if you want to take a book or disc to another room of your abode, you pull it from the bookshelf and take it with you. Similarly, if you're working on a document upstairs on your desktop and you want to move to the den with your laptop, you'll need the proper infrastructure working in the background to enable that kind of wizardry. So, how can we create this "digital bookshelf?" Can you go out and buy it now? Can you build it in your garage? As it turns out, the answer is "yes" on all counts. You could go out and buy a Drobo device but in this case, we're going to assemble our own. And we're going to do that with the help of an open source storage platform called FreeNAS. So how involved a process is that? Meet us after the break to find out.