Why can't OSX "Lion" connect to NAS volumes even after i've enabled DHCAST128?
September 29, 2011 6:22 PM   Subscribe

Why can't OSX "Lion" connect to NAS volumes even after i've enabled DHCAST128?

like many folks out there i had an pleasant surprise when i upgraded my mac to the new "Lion" version: i could no longer connect my NAS devices because [in their infinite wisdom] Apple had decided to disable the version of AppleTalk used to communicate to those devices. thankfully my newer devices (from Synology) had firmware upgrades made available that complied with the new Apple "standard." however legacy devices such as my first-gen Buffalo Terastation (yeah, i'm an early adopter) warranted no such attention from the manufacturer because they are so old.

i thought i'd lucked out when i found support documents detailing how to hack my OS to re-enable DHCAST128, but even after applying this tweak i still cannot connect to Terastation with AppleTalk or Samba. it is crazy frustrating because *ALL* of my music is on that NAS array and my wife is pissed to no end that she can't listen to music all over the house (a nifty little system i'd set up using AirPort Expresses and iTunes....she LOVED it and was just getting hooked on it when Lion screwed it all up).

so.....what to do? i can connect to the Terastation NAS using a Leopard laptop through both SMB and AFP, but i have no way of migrating the music to another volume without buying a new drive or NAS (it is just too big).

i can confirm that DHCAST128 is not on the disallowed UAM list, so it SHOULD work...but it doesn't. if anybody out there has any clue as to how i can fix this i'd really appreciate it. i *tried* dealing with the chipper morons at the Genius Bar but they say i need to contact the NAS manufacturer (i went through THREE "geniuses" until i found one who knew what they were talking about, and only AFTER they called support. way to go, Apple).

thanks in advance
posted by monkeybutt to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
For step #5 instead of the command they have, try:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_disabled_uams -array
I think that should enable all UAMs.
posted by sbutler at 10:06 PM on September 29, 2011


sbutler - that will only help if the Terastation uses a UAM that is even less secure and more deprecated than DHCAST128. possible, I guess, but shoddy as hell on Buffalo's part.

monkeybutt - Apple has disabled some authenticatoin methods that are known-insecure and have been deprecated for years. unfortunately some vendors are happy to keep shipping insecure products unless forced to do otherwise, the alternative on Apple's part is to never break backwards compatibility but instead keep shipping insecure software for ever.

I know nothing about Buffalo's products, but assuming there's a web management interface like consumer NAS boxes tend to have, I'd just try enabling Guest access to all shares and then log in unauthenticated to copy the data off.
posted by russm at 11:11 PM on September 29, 2011


That's weird that SMB isn't working. It's completely separate from AFP.
posted by zsazsa at 11:36 PM on September 29, 2011 [1 favorite]


that will only help if the Terastation uses a UAM that is even less secure and more deprecated than DHCAST128

Yes, that was what I was trying to test. On the one hand, it sucks to be using something less secure. On the other (if it works), he's always been connecting with a less secure UAM just now he knows it.

As far as CIFS/SMB goes... I'm not surprised. Because of GPL3 in newer version of Samba Apple couldn't include it. So they wrote their own CIFS client. I guess it works well enough with Windows proper, but there are plenty of reports of it falling flat with 3rd party implementations.
posted by sbutler at 11:37 PM on September 29, 2011 [1 favorite]


re-reading my previous answer it comes across as snarkier than I intended... yeah it sucks from an end-user perspective that stuff that used to work just stopped on an OS upgrade... I'm not sure how else Apple can drop deprecated features though... spend a major OS release popping up a "this is insecure" warning whenever you connect to a DHCAST128 only server? that just trains people to click "OK" on security warnings...
posted by russm at 1:16 AM on September 30, 2011


To expand on sbutler, when we were testing OSX Lion beta in an enterprise environment, one Mac nearly brought our NAS to its knees with so much CIFS traffic. I think they've ironed that issue by now, but I'm still not convinced it's Samba is fully developed.
posted by samsara at 9:29 AM on October 1, 2011


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