Media & Cache on shared storage network

Thanks everyone. Lumaforge is working with Apple on this. Fortunately we can still read/write to the SMB share in the Finder just fine, so we'll be copying all assets to an external SSD to work off until this is resolved.

SNS has published a knowledge-base update which confirms our findings: the issue only affects specific configurations and workloads, and it cannot be reproduced on all systems running Catalina: support.studionetworksolutions.com/hc/en...alina-w-SNS-products

We have indeed submitted an engineering report to Apple and we are currently working with them towards a solution.

- Ronny

oldsoul-

I'd encourage you to reach out to SNS as it appears they have a fix until Apple can address this at the OS level.

I tried it on Friday, and everything is working and looking good for our Catalina based machines.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Jeremy G. Thats great news. I've been working with SNS since the beginning and have been diligent about trying to solve this. They are working on a Mojave patch now and will let me know. Fingers crossed.

Actually, it was a very dumb thing they changed without letting anyone know. There is an easy fix for this, we have tested it with different clients.

- Ronny

Wow, thanks to everyone for troubleshooting this! I thought we were all going crazy. Every once in a while we would have a disconnection, or the library refused to save. Our storage is connected through SMB. I THINK we mitigated the problem somewhat by pointing to the cache to a different subfolder whenever we switched machines.

It's crazy because Apple has broken SMB several times over the years, and they often don't communicate how they're changing the implementation. Whoever's in charge of this needs to be fired.

Can you specify the "dumb thing" that they changed? We have a QNAP SMB server and I would like to know if there is a way for us to deal with the issue while waiting on Apple.

I am not an IT engineer, I repeat what our techies are saying. But it has something to do with port usage and netbios. Just like SNS, our support team has released a patch for our clients. I am sure that Qnap will do the same soon.

- Ronny

We had the Mojave machines fixed yesterday and there’s even improvement there, even though those machines weren’t dropping connections.

Good to hear that, Jeremy! It's actually the same fix, but with a little tweak.

- Ronny

It would be greatly appreciated if someone who is working on solutions could actually publish specific technical details on both the issues introduced in macOS Catalina and the current work arounds being implemented by teams such as yours and other teams like SNS. I keep seeing this issue posted everywhere online, but no one is posting anything helpful for people like myself that have to try and DIY fix this kind of an issue. If you have any ability to get a more technical explanation on potential fixes, it would be so incredibly appreciated. Thanks.

For us, it was a machine to machine fix.

I would suggest getting in touch with QNAP to see if they can help you out.

After contacting Qnap they've confirmed they haven't heard this, but a ticket has been filed. Looking at the available information it appears that this has nothing to do with Qnap, Lumaforge, or SNS. They just happened to have figured it out and made changes to MacOS itself rather than updating the firmware on the NAS. While this is nice for those customers it leaves everyone else out in the cold until Apple acknowledges and fixes the problem. If this is the case there has to be a way to get this working without having to be an SNS or Lumaforge customer. They have so far not published any info on how the fixes work.

Hi Grant, welcome to the forums.

The issue only is apparent when working with FCP X and Catalina under heavy workloads, which I don't always expect from people using a small desktop NAS. So it's not really surprising to hear that QNAP is not aware of these issues.

All professional NAS manufacturers have been working on a fix. LumaForge has released an update to the Jellyfish Connect App that manages the interaction between the workstations and the server and fixes the Catalina issues. Such updates take engineering time and budget, and they are part of the support that is included in the price that clients pay for their systems. So it's quite obvious that no-one will publish any information about this. I'm sure that QNAP will release their own fix soon if they get more people reporting these issues.

- Ronny

Here's a possible fix for folks like myself that don't have the same support as other NAS solutions like Lumaforge and SNS.

I have literally spent an insane amount of time researching ways to improve network performance in macOS Catalina and I have finally stumbled across a solution. I have documented it on Apple's community website.

discussions.apple.com/thread/251102946?page=1

It involves a built in macOS feature called "Server Performance Mode". It seems to be that macOS Catalina default system parameters for networking are not tuned for high demand network performance. That being said, it seems that at some point in time as far back as OS X Mountain Lion some engineers at Apple created a feature called “Server Performance Mode”.  Imagine that, a feature in macOS literally named after creating a network performance mode.  This feature is documented on Apple.com

Server Performance Mode
support.apple.com/en-us/HT202528

The description reads:
Performance mode changes the system parameters of your Mac. These changes take better advantage of your hardware for demanding server applications. A Mac that needs to run high-performance services can turn on performance mode to dedicate additional system resources for server applications.

Implementing this feature on my brand new Mac Pro (2019) connected to a QNAP system fixed issues with Final Cut Pro X freezing and disconnecting SMB network volume shares. It also increased my throughput performance from 30%-50%. My machine almost reaches the theoretical max throughput of 10GbE. I have also tested this on older machines running Mojave and they also gained performance improvements. I have also tested older "trash can" Mac Pro's upgraded to Catalina that were previously also crashing and disconnecting SMB shares and they too are now working. I can't promise that this will fix everybody's issues, but I can tell you that there is a good chance it will help your overall network performance especially if you are using a high demanding network application.

I just can't believe this feature exists and is yet so hard to find, It has apparently been part of macOS for a long time. I have been talking with this issue with Apple directly the entire time leading up to my discovery and they refused to help in anyway or admit that anything was missed configured in macOS Catalina. So to say I have been a frustrated Apple customer is an understatement. Their FCPX team and engineers should be more aware of built in macOS features that help and affect network performance.

I hope this helps someone.

afite wrote: ...Implementing this feature on my brand new Mac Pro (2019) connected to a QNAP system fixed issues with Final Cut Pro X freezing and disconnecting SMB network volume shares. It also increased my throughput performance from 30%-50%. My machine almost reaches the theoretical max throughput of 10GbE....I just can't believe this feature exists and is yet so hard to find, It has apparently been part of macOS for a long time. I have been talking with this issue with Apple directly the entire time leading up to my discovery and they refused to help in anyway or admit that anything was missed configured in macOS Catalina. So to say I have been a frustrated Apple customer is an understatement. Their FCPX team and engineers should be more aware of built in macOS features that help and affect network performance....

Thanks for that info. The wording implies Server Performance Mode is intended for server-side scenarios such as database servers running on MacOS. The current Catalina NAS problem reverses that where the NAS is the server and MacOS is the client. However if it fixes your situation, that is great. This is a serious issue. Apple does not provide mission-critical "hot fixes", and there are valid pros/cons to that practice. However this leaves customers fending for themselves.

Server Performance Mode is a documented feature and if it helps someone suffering from the Catalina NAS problem, they can try it.

This post implies that disabling System Integrity Protection is needed to enable Server Performance Mode: www.codingmerc.com/blog/enable-server-pe...-on-os-x-el-capitan/

Afterward you'd want to enable SIP, as that protects against things like the Chrome Keystone bug which rendered many Macs non-bootable: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2...d-macs-from-booting/

I can confirm the Server Performance Mode does indeed work. Not sure why you think System Integrity Protection needs to be disabled as I tried this on multiple machines without having to disable SIP. Googling the feature makes it seem like SIP must be disabled, but that has not been my personal experience. Only a reboot is needed. FCP stability and general network speed to the network shares are greatly increased and are far more stable when compared to the default settings.

If both SNS and Lumaforge have documented that this is a MacOS problem but have neglected to release any technical info on their solutions, this solution remains the only publicly available option that actually works. It also happens to be a long standing native feature of MacOS. The same google search reveals this isn't dangerous and doesn't make the client computer a "server" in the classic sense, instead just changing the tolerances for simultaneous connections, packet size, and memory usage. If you're running an old mac this might not be a good idea. If you're running a Mac Pro for the purpose of, oh I don't know, editing in FCP with a NAS, the hardware resources far exceed these thresholds.

If anyone feels uncomfortable enabling this feature, by all means wait for Apple to fix it, though I doubt that will happen given their response mentioned above.

@awkward_eagle
Glad to hear this fix is working for someone else too.

@joema
I was not aware of the potential need to disable SIP. Thanks for the tip as it's good to know that the situation may come up. For whatever reason, my systems both running Catalina and Mojave did not require the SIP disabling in order to enable Server Performance Mode. I would be curious to know which hardware and OS configurations require it. The link you sent makes it look like it was required for El Capitan.

afite wrote: ...I was not aware of the potential need to disable SIP...my systems both running Catalina and Mojave did not require the SIP disabling in order to enable Server Performance Mode....The link you sent makes it look like it was required for El Capitan.

The link I sent said El Capitan and later. However this may have changed. The Apple article gives a procedure using a terminal NVRAM command to set Server Performance Mode, then to interrogate it to ensure it is enabled. If people are using that and it reports enabled, that's good, assuming it doesn't cause any other issues.

More info on what Server Performance Mode does:

apple.stackexchange.com/questions/264958...actually-do-on-macos

As a side note, if you need to temporarily disable System Integrity Protection in order to enable Server Performance Mode, SIP can be reenabled and the fix will remain in place. The only time you'd need to reenable Server Performance Mode is if you do an nvram reset.