SOLVED All Samba shares suddenly stop working!

[NumberSix]

Hi
Suddenly today all three of my Samba shares suddenly stopped working - they are inaccessible / won't open. Windows reports TrueNAS as not connected, despite appearing as a clickable item under 'Network'. As far as I can see, TrueNAS thinks they are available.

For emphasis, I am a total beginner. So if you ask me for any diagnostics, please spell out for me exactly how to provide them - thank you!

On a previous occassion when this happened, unable to diagnose it even with help, I tried deleting and re-creating the share. That fixed the problem (not this time) but didn't really throw any light onto why it had happened. I have installed no new software on my Windows machine (and certainly none on the NAS) and am a complete loss as to why the TrueNAS just turned into in Windows inaccessible lump of metal when nothing has changed. Can anyone help at all, please?

Ok, update.
Following in the footsteps of my last 'irrational' fix (why should the shares need re-creating? - yet it worked), I decided to abandon my attempt to see how long I could run the TrueNAS machine for without interruption (7 or 8 days) and just re-boot it, to see if that helped). And... that fixed the samba shares. Good news, but only for today. Why is this system so temperamental (read 'unreliable')? It's rather undermining my confidence in a system to which I have entrusted every single digital asset that has any meaning or value to me. A system which cuts off windows access, seemingly when the wind changes direction, with no chance of knowing why. I'd welcome your thoughts on this please.

 

[morganL]

Hello Number six,

System reliability is a combination of software reliability, operator accuracy, platform reliability and client reliability.

Hopefully, you have two clients you can test from. If you haven't changed anything on the NAS and it just fails, that's a problem. With only one client, it might be a client issue.

Stopping and restarting a service (e.g SMB) is the simplest and fastest approach to clearing an issue. However, those issues should not happen. In the case of 12.0-U3.1, there are tens of thousands of users using SMB and its not failing. If multiple users see a similar failure, then we have an issue to chase down.

Platform reliability is a difficult.. any small issue in RAM can cause issues. You don't have ECC protection on your RAM, but that is unlikely to cause the same issue repetitively.

My advice would be to be systematic....keep track of events and see if you can find a pattern. Eliminate client, operator errors.... then see if the errors are the same each time or more random.

Morgan

 

[NumberSix]

Hi
Thank you for your thoughts, and for giving me a helpful idea. I do have two Windows PC's but have only created Samba shares on one of them. No reason not to duplicate the setup on the other and - taking a cue from your 'be systematic' advice - create a situation where I can rule out whether the issue is TrueNAS side or Windows side. If it turns out to be TrueNAS side I'll be lost and back here to ask more advice, but of course I won't cross that bridge unless it presents itself!

Thank you very much for your help MorganL!