Tag Archives: macOS

macOS Bug: Connecting to another Mac via SMB protocol results in client hanging indefinitely at shutdown or restart

How to force SMB2, which actually doesn’t work for me:

10.14.3 – SMB3 Performance Issues – Force SMB2

Related discussion on Apple Communities

Computers Won’t Shut Down After Connecting To Server

Bug reports on Apple Radar:

How to submit sysdiagnose:

  • Command + Option + Shift+ Control + Period (.)
  • Or in Terminal: sudo sysdiagnose

Note: The sysdiagnose process can take 10 minutes to complete. Once finished, the folder /private/var/tmp/ should appear automatically in the Finder and the sysdiagnose file there will look similar to this:

sysdiagnose_2017.08.17_07-30-12-0700_10169.tar.gz

View active SMB connection status:

smbutil statshares -a

How to Rebuild a RAID 1 Setup (WD My Book Duo) on macOS, the Right Way

This guide will talk about rebuilding a failed RAID 1 disk with WD My Book Duo on macOS, it should also works on Thunderbolt Duo or other RAID 1 setup.

Many other guides only tell you how to replace the whole two disks without restoring / rebuilding data for this common situation:

In a common case, your RAID 1 setup could fail with only one defective disk, while the other is online. If you see this status on your macOS:

  1. Buy a brand new disk, same size and model as your failed disk.
  2. Reboot your mac in recovery mode, this step is very important to make sure your disks are not used by macOS.
  3. In recovery boot, open Disk Utility.
  4. Rename your RAID set, for example if your RAID set is External-Raid, rename it to something like External-Raid-Rebuild or just some names different than your original, this is the most important step to make sure your RAID set wouldn’t be using after entering macOS system.
  5. Restart your system in normal mode.
  6. Login to your system, then open Disk Utility, congrats, you will see the new disk is now rebuilding.

Other notes:

  • Restraint editing/adding/removing files on your RAID set while rebuilding.
  • The rebuild process could take hours depends on your disk size (10-20 hours for a 4 TB + 4 TB RAID 1 setup).
  • After the rebuild complete, you can rename your RAID volume name back to original.

This is not the only way to rebuild your RAID with a failed disk. According to WD documentation, you can power on your My Book Duo without connecting to macOS (remove the thunderbolt cable), then the My Book Duo should rebuild it automatically. However, it’s really hard to know when the rebuild process will finish, there’s no special indicator status for this situation, so I prefer rebuilding in macOS. This could be the best method for me.

S/MIME for Apple Mail, The Right Way (DigiCert Version)

Install it on macOS:

  • Download cert bundle (.p7b) or individual certs (zipped) from DigiCert
  • Double click to install them on macOS Keychain Access

Install it on iOS:

  • Open Keychain Access, select category My Certificates
  • Right click and choose Export, select format .p12 (Make sure to export your cert into .p12, this will contain private key for iOS to send encrypted emails)
  • Email it with your individual certs (root CAs from DigiCert) and install them on iOS
  • Select this cert under email account settings

macOS Sierra Universal Clipboard Issue with VNC (Screen Sharing) Shared Clipboard

If you like me owning more than one Mac and using one of them to control the other via macOS built-in Screen Sharing feature, you may occur this issue after you upgrade your macOS to Sierra.

macOS Sierra introduces a new feature Universal Clipboard which can share the same clipboard among iOS and macOS devices. This sounds cool, but as it’s technically a part of Continuity feature, it would require Bluetooth to work.

So the problem is, when I control my Mac mini from my MacBook Pro via Screen Sharing in the same network, with the Shared Clipboard enabled, the Universal Clipboard would still always try to “sync” copied content via Bluetooth instead of using Screen Sharing Shared Clipboard.

It’s ok if both of your Macs are at your hand, but it’s a disaster if they’re in different rooms, Universal Clipboard via Bluetooth would become really slow to connect to each other, and this issue could even make your VNC drop connection if you copy images to your clipboard.

So here’s the solution, just disable Bluetooth on your Mac mini, and wait Apple to fix this bug.

Signing Git Commits without Entering Password Using `gpg-agent` and `pinentry-mac` on OS X

Install required packages via Homebrew:

$ brew install gpg gpg-agent pinentry-mac

Edit and add the following lines in ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf:

pinentry-program /usr/local/bin/pinentry-mac

Edit and enable use-agent in ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf:

use-agent

Then add the following line to your shell profile:

eval $(gpg-agent --daemon --sh)

ProxyChains-NG and OS X El Capitan System Integrity Protection System Integrity Protection

Apple introduces System Integrity Protection (SIP) as a security feature for OS X El Capitan (10.11), which prevent ProxyChains-NG working as before, you have to disable SIP to make it work:

  1. Reboot your Mac into Recovery Mode by pressing command-R
  2. Open Terminal and type csrutil enable --without debug:
$ csrutil enable --without debug
$ csrutil: requesting an unsupported configuration. This is likely to break in the future and leave your machine in an unknown state.
$ Successfully enabled System Integrity Protection. Please restart the machine for the changes to take effect.

Just ignore the warnings and then restart your Mac.