Unable to view ZFS share from two machines at the same time

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Unable to view ZFS share from two machines at the same time

Post by epaulsberg » Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:07 pm

Hello,

I have a Mac Mini from 2011 w/ Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.2) and 16GB RAM running ZEVO Community Edition 1.1.1. Connected to it is a WD 8TB Thunderbolt.

Whenever I connect with a single machine to a share exported from my "ZFS NAS", things seem to work well. However, once I connect with more than one machine (e.g. one connection from a Windows 7 machine, and one from a Macbook Air) to the same share and start browsing or copying files, the share suddenly can't be accessed from either of these computers. I can still browse and view/copy files if I use the Mac Mini itself, but not from any other remote computer using SMB. I'm using the same credentials to connect to the ZFS share from both computers.

Usually the fan on the Mac Mini will also kick into high gear at the same time I lose connectivity from both remote machines, and it will run for 15 minutes or so before quieting down. Running "top" shows no high CPU usage for any particular process, though (i.e. none more than 1-2%, except top itself which might use some more).

I've had this problem also with previous versions of ZEVO. I'm not sure if it's due to the ZEVO implementation, the SMB protocol, the sandboxing policy on OS X, or something else. Sometimes I've seen ZFS errors when running dmesg (see below), but these don't seem to show up consistently.

Example output from dmesg:
Sandbox: sandboxd(60874) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd
Sandbox: sandboxd(61011) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd
Sandbox: sandboxd(61153) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd
zfs_secpolicy_write_perms: duo/nas error 89
Sandbox: sandboxd(61233) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd
Sandbox: sandboxd(61371) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd
Sandbox: sandboxd(61510) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

Anybody has experienced the same issue with ZFS and SMB or know what could be going on here? I'm considering trying NFS instead, but would really prefer to use SMB.

-Espen
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system-wide diagnostic information at the server

Post by grahamperrin » Fri Dec 21, 2012 2:47 am

epaulsberg wrote:… Usually the fan on the Mac Mini will also kick into high gear at the same time I lose connectivity from both remote machines, and it will run for 15 minutes or so before quieting down. Running "top" shows no high CPU usage …


At that Mac, as soon as possible after the behaviour is heard:

  1. before running top – before anything else – command, or key the chord for, sysdiagnose
  2. for at least ten seconds, do nothing
  3. await the result, it should be brought to front in Finder.

If the chord is keyed whilst no local user is logged in, then wait maybe five minutes before logging in then find the result at:

/var/tmp

sysdiagnose(1) OS X Manual Page

> … gathers system diagnostic information helpful in investigating system
> performance issues. A great deal of information is harvested, spanning
> system state and configuration. … 

Whilst what's at the server may be not a performance issue, the gathering may reveal something of interest.
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The bigger picture, for a moment

Post by grahamperrin » Fri Dec 21, 2012 3:15 am

Elsewhere (to put things in context for other readers)

ZEVO Wiki Site/File Sharing And ZFS (2012-09-14) reminds us that SMB may be preferred, to avoid the current limitations of AFP.

HOW TO: Share ZFS using AFP (2012-09-16) finds a succession of people making effective use of joshado/liberate-applefileserver also known as Liberate AppleFileServer.

Sharing ZFS Volume: AFP, SMB, NFS, whatever! (2012-11-28) found someone experimenting with both SMB and ZFS before preferring liberated AFP.

At a glance, I can't see whether any successful uses of liberated AFP include concurrent use of two or more AFP clients. So there's a question.

This topic

The wish to focus on SMB (to follow the initial recommendation from developers of ZEVO) is understandable.

Is the SMB share of:

  • the root of a ZFS file system at the root of a ZFS pool?

If any root is involved, then please see whether the problem with concurrency is reproducible when instead, you share:

  • a subdirectory (not the root) of a child file system
  • without indexing – deselect the option in the ZEVO pane of System Preferences.

Instead = prefer to no longer share the problematic share point; remove it from the Sharing pane of System Preferences.

Whilst it may be desirable to index the file system, for this test I'd like to see whether indexing is a factor.
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