Mac sharing credentials stop working after 3-4 hours

[dfran1]

Hi ,
I have had this problem for over a year and have been dealing with apple enterprise and now Big Sur is even worse. I can not seem to find anyone at apple so far that actually wants to help me but a bandaid on this at the least, but apple continues to say the engineers know of the problem and it wi be fixed in a future update!, But it has been over a year and still no fix.... so here goes

I installed a Mac Mini 2018 with 3.2 I7, 64 gig ram, 10 gig ethernet port, 1 TB SSD (I call it a server)

the problem is every 3-4 hours the server locks out computers from read write to its shared folders

I have a printer that seems to do it first as the printer is used as a scanner with shared folder accesss on the server,
meaning , I created a folder on the server called Printer Share then within the Printer Share I created user folders , so
Printer Share
user 1
user 2
and so on like 15 users
when the Mac Mini server stops accepting the credentials the printer says authentication access denied

then I do this to fix the problem

• Use get info on the drive on the mac mini server
• Unlock the lock button
• Remove any share name (I remove Printer Share)
• Add the share back
• Use the drop down arrow and choose “apply to enclosed items”
• Its fixed again for 3-4 hours

now I also have weird save problems on am iMac from an office lady and I also get denied access from windows clients trying to save to the server but it takes longer to show up on them.

I have no idea if any one heard about this or ran into this but its very annoying and getting really old.

at a minimum can I automate something somehow on the fix I found to work?

Thank you anyone for any help!!!! I am not that good at command prompt in mac but if I get some complete lines I with instructions I can definitely get them in lol

Thank You sooooooooo much!!!!

 

[BrianBaughn]

I think you must be leaving a lot out here. Are you using System Preferences>Sharing>File Sharing in any way?

I'm thinking changing drive permissions via Get Info isn't a solution here and may actually cause more issues.

 

[dfran1]

Hi,
Thank you for replying and if any more info is needed that i missed please advise ....

All macs are running Big Sur 11.2 now also

I did create the shares by using System Preferences>Sharing>File Sharing.
I have moved the shared folders to another partition I created with the APFS instead of keeping it on the OS Extended Journaled, as I read others had problems with file shares on Extended journaled, but nothing has helped.
In doing this I made it easier for others to fix this problem by just sharing the drive to everyone (the data drive only that is), small company 10 people max (no private data from any office people). I want to give people their own shares but can't yet.

I do have parallels on the main drive sharing a program in windows 10 pro with no problems at all.

So now others can just do what i stated above in the get info under sharing & permissions, it only makes it easier as soon as I can get a fix on this I will put things back to normal for sure.

thank you for any solution or band aid (i really need something, thank you)

EDIT : I also have tinker tool System installed as that was a work around the enterprise apple person found for me last year , but now with Big Sur tinker tool System no longer does anything (updated version to work with Big Sur), Apple and I also used some command lines and they no longer do anything with Big Sur

EDIT: 2 What I don't understand is why others are not posting more about this also, I can't be the only one with these sharing problems?

 

[appltech]

I'd like to throw an idea here. (I'd like to point out, that I've never used File Sharing on macOS to that extent, but did even bigger shares on Windows, so I have some experience
[but also, my thoughts might be too deep and absolutely mistaken]
Most likely, computers on your network use AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), which is the default option. It generates authentication tokens. It is posible, that AFP deauthenticates users after a period of time (due to "security" reasons), if there's no activity, e.g. token expires, so you need to do everything from the beginning. It should not happen like thise, because AFP has mechanisms to keep the connection alive and re-issue those tokens. The problem might be more potent on Big Sur, since you may find some information, like this here and there.
I tried to dig a bit more information, but finding anything is painfully hard.
See these articles: 1, 2 and 3 for a possible lead. Keywords: token, expiration.
Also, consider using an alternative file sharing protocol, like SMB.

 

[dfran1]

Hi,
First of all thank you sooooo much for any feedback you or anyone else may have!! I really appreciate it!

One of the troubleshooting steps apple did with me was to make sure I only used SMB on the mac to share, no difference. I tried to make sure the printer and windows computers are on smb (as that is the only option in the mac now with Big Sur) and I did create the new partition and moved files and created new shares on Big Sur. What I don't know is how to check and see if these windows computers are actually using SMB as the same line is used
from a mac you use smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
from windows you use the standard & printer \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Kind of makes me wonder why windows don't use the mac way to make sure??

Now what you said made me think about the printer, as the printer fails first before windows computers and macs stop accessing the shares but I have no idea how to verify the printer as its a sharp MX-M365N, i have tried to dig for firmware updates and unless I am a dealer or authorized repair shop for them I can't get access or numbers to call sharp so far...

I am certainly wondering if the printer is my main problem , it would certainly drop authentication tokens, if that is happening as you stated. On my tests with the printer, if i use usernames and passwords, the printer will stop accessing shares in 2-3 hours, if I don't use any user or password the printer stops accessing shares on the mac in 3-4 hours. I certainly wonder if the printer is the problem and I can not eliminate it at all as all office people constantly scan paperwork to pdf files with it all day. (one every 1-2 hours)

Thank You for any input!!!

 

[dfran1]

I still can not believe no one here did not see this problem, or any file share osx problem, has to all be related.

I think (I certainly Hope) i have found a fix for this in tinker tools. after a few days or so of testing, I will post back

 

[dfran1]

That did not work and I had to redo to where I was before.

does anyone know how to ......
instead of clicking on the "Apply to enclosed Items" from the drop down under the "Sharing & Permissions" section to the right of the "+ - " when you right click a drive "this case the drive is called "DATA" and choose get info.
is their any command that can be used in terminal or in automation ? to run the command every hour on the hour?

I think this will fix it by doing this, I think I have to run this 2 or 3 times in a row , still testing this...

If i can get a command to do that automatically even find a command that does that, then maybe this will be a great work around for the problem until (even if ever) Apple fixes the issue .

Thank you all for any help
Thank you

 

[dfran1]

Update to this long ongoing problem, I recently found out our shop printer does not do SMTP, so It does do FTP, so I purchased a $20 FTP program for the mac mini server and so far it seems 99% of my file sharing problems are gone.

some day in the future i now need to redo the sharing permissions for proper operation, when I have lots of time. But at least all seems good now.

 

[dfran1]

I have finally got rid of the problem ..
It was a 10 year old sharp printer MX-N365N, that messes with the file sharing on macs. I stopped using the copy to folder option on the sharp and instead use FTP (installed a nice app off the apple app store for FTP, on the mac mini server) and all my file sharing problems went away!! It's been 2 plus months now and WOW no more mad office staff!!

I just wanted to update this tread to the problem, thank you for your help!!!