Switch from AFP to CIFS without data loss?

[TheWoo]

I'm new to FreeNAS, since 25 years on Mac, tech-savvy, yet little admin knowledge and have recently assembled my first PC ever (FreeNAS with ASRock E3C226D2I, 16 GB ECC RAM etc.).

Everything works fine, except for the fact that the AFP share which holds 11 TB of movies mounts unreliably and reacts somewhat slow in the OS X Finder, despite being connected through the Intel NIC and Gigabit Ethernet.

I’ve searched the net and learned that Apple has deprecated AFP in favor for SMB2 (AFP is still supported, but no longer developed).

Questions:

1. Can I change the share type without losing any data?
   (Storage > Volumes > Name of the AFP share > Edit Options > Change 'Share Type' from 'Mac' to 'Windows' (=CIFS))
2. I saw under Services > CIFS Settings that there are options for 'Server minimum protocol' and 'Server maximum protocol'. Exactly which min./max. version of Samba should I set, when talking to Macs only (all running Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10)? SMB2, SMB2_02, SMB2_10, SMB2_22, SMB2_24, SMB3, SMB3_00?

Sorry for asking, but I have little to no knowledge on network protocols.

 

[TheWoo]

I’ve gone full risk, deleted the AFP share under Sharing > Name of the AFP volume > Hitting Delete Button and adding a CIFS share with the same mnt path. Works fine, so question 1. is solved. It should be said that naming the button in the Sharing options 'Delete' makes you shit your pants. 'Unlink' would match much better, as it doesn't imply a possible data erase. Or a tool tip on hovering over the button, saying 'Deletes share, but not data inside share'.

Answer to question 2. anyone?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Leave the minimum value to be the default value and max version should be smb2. This info in if the manual and you should read the whole thing of you haven't already. http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_services.html#cifs

 

[Jailer]

The type of sharing (CIFS, or AFP) is just the "language" that the data is shared in. Changing that doesn't affect the data, it just affects how it's communicated from host to client.

As far #2, use the default setting.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Leaving the default of smb3 has caused issues in the past for windows and Mac. You can try it and if things with good! If not you should try switching to smb2.

 

[Jailer]

Mine defaults to SMB2.

 

[TheWoo]

Thanks for your answers. I’ve read the CIFS section of the manual, but it didn’t contain any information on settings for using it on the various versions of Mac OS X (the AFP to SMB2 switch started with Mavericks 10.9 from what I’ve read).

 

[TinTIn]

Out of interest TheWoo if you now launch a word doc from the share and edit it and then save it back to the share do you get an annoying word work .tmp file appear that doesn't go away?
Thanks


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[TheWoo]

@TinTin: Using Word 14.4.7 on Mac OS X 10.10.2 here. Saving a file Test.docx on the FreeNAS CIFS/SMB2 share creates an additionally the invisible file ._Test.docx, which is 4KB and AFAIK contains the icon. If I trash Test.docx, the related invisible file gets automatically trashed as well. No file ending to .tmp.

 

[TinTIn]

That's good to hear so perhaps it's just my setup. Thanks for the info.

Would you mind telling me what version of FreeNAS you are running? Also I know you are running windows datasets but assume you are using Win permissions? If so have you made any edits to them from a windows box? Basically have you made any modifications/tweets? Are you running SMB2 or SMB3?

Sorry for all the questions but I'm excited there might light at the end of the tunnel..

Thanks


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[TheWoo]

FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201502271818. SMB2. Under the CIFS option for that particular share 'Apply Default Permissions' is checked. Under Storage > Volumes > Name of Volume > Change Permissions (Button in lower left corner) Permission Type is set to Windows. Looks all pretty much default to me. Perhaps a quirky setting in Word?

 

[TinTIn]

Did you change the dataset to a Win dataset also?


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[TheWoo]

Sorry, FreeNAS NOOB. How/where can I check that?

 

[TinTIn]

Datasets are what a lot of people call their shares however this gets confusing as your sharing protocol can be one of three. It's essentially the area where you create a volume. When you first launch FreeNAS and go through the wizard and select your disks you are creating a zpool made up of one or more vdevs (a vdev being one or more physical disks) and then from that, one dataset is created. After that point you probably created datasets off that one and this is the area I'm referring to. Does that make sense? The dataset can be UNIX, Win or Mac and separate to that the Permissions can also be UNIX, Win or Mac. Then you offer up that dataset using a sharing protocol like NFS (UNIX) CIFS (Win) or AFP (Mac).


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[TinTIn]

I got this working ta so not sure what was going on. Many thanks.


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