SMB broke after setting up NFS

Seeing as I have to keep running SMBUp to use Samba3 instead of Apple's SMB2 in order to use XBMC on my AppleTV units, but that then doesn't let me use Apple's SMB2 with other Macs, etc. So the solution seemed to be to set up NFS instead for XBMC.

I used NFSManager, but I could NOT get it to work (after reading some more I think there were two things about certain ports I had to unselect, but maybe not since some said it's broken for Mavericks). In any case, I removed the configuration in it, quit and set it up manually which was pretty easy, after all. I simply had to add the "-N" option to the .com...blah blah file and add an /etc/exports file with the setup option for my Media drive. NFS now works a treat and XBMC can use it just fine.

The problem is now when I try to access an SMB share, whether from XBMC (using SMBUp, which I did try re-installing) or another Mac using either SMBUp or Apple's own SMB2, it just says it can't connect. No uninstalling, re-enabling or rebooting makes any difference. It cannot use it.

"SMBUtil view" in a shell with my network shows the SMB shares are set up correctly and apparently running. So I have no idea why things cannot access those shares or what setting up NFS could possibly have done to screw up SMB. AFP still works normally (although my other Mac will not switch to AFP automatically when accessing my server; it says it cannot find it; I have to manually enter AFP://Address to get it to connect.

Anyone have any idea what setting up NFS could have screwed up? Could NFSManager have changed a file or something?

EDIT: Well, it appears something along the way entered a new entry into my OSX firewall setting that told it to BLOCK all SMBD activity. I turned it back to ALLOW and all is well again (sigh)....

 

For using XBMC from remote machines or devices to access my server running Mavericks, I've found NFS to be superior in that I don't have to turn off Apple's own SMB2 and replace it with SMBUp any longer (Samba 3's features are behind SMB2's features as Samba4 supposedly achieves parity with SMB2) and I no longer get "share unavailable" with NFS that I got with Samba while my media hard drive was waking from sleep.

NFS was pretty straight forward to set up here. You can get the "NFS Manager" software to get a GUI app, but it didn't work here when I tried it.

This procedure is described in the XBMC Wiki on NFS: http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=NFS#NFS_sharing_from_OS_X

Note that this procedure could change over time if something in NFS changes in OSX, so consult the Wiki for updates if need be.

Step 1:

This text has to be added to this file with a text editor of some kind (nano, pico, vi from a shell command window or some other GUI text editor in OSX): System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.nfsd.plist


<array>
<string>/sbin/nfsd</string>
<string>-N</string>
</array>


This lets XBMC access NFS without having to be run as root (which it is normally not)

You then need a file called exports to be created with a text editor in /etc

It needs to contain the list of shared locations or drives to be shared over NFS.

For example, if you wanted to share your OSX Movies directory, you would have this entry in that file if your username was Biff:

/Users/Biff/Movies -ro -mapall=nobody -alldirs

-ro makes it read only
-mapall=nobody is a security precaution
-alldirs lets the browsing software see any sub-directories as well

Finally, you need to start the server from the shell with:

sudo nfsd start

It'll require you to enter your user password. (sudo nfsd stop will stop the server sharing)

To access the share from Finder on another Mac you would select "Connect to Server" from "Go" menu in the menu bar of Finder and enter this if your computer's network name was MyComputer:

nfs://MyComputer/Users/Movies

You can substitute the numerical address of the local server where "MyComputer" is instead as well. If it were 192.168.2, for example, you could put that instead of it's alias name.

From XBMC, you can find it under ZeroConf. It will show "MyComputer (NFS)" in the list and clicking on it will show /Users/Movies as being available to add to the file list.

SMBUp has its own GUI interface and it will set itself up for you if you prefer to use Samba. You do need to disable SMB sharing from System Preferences first, though. It's fairly self-explanatory. It has a button for adding a shared drive and folders, etc. and you give your network a name and start the server when you're done setting the shared directories. In either case, you'll need to make sure your folders and files are set to be able to be read by "Everyone" (Finder Get Info) or they'll not be visible in XBMC properly.