File Sharing with Big Sur (from Catalina)

[swiftaw]

I installed the Big Sur beta on my Macbook Air, and kept my primary iMac on Catalina. Since I upgraded to Big Sur on the Air I cannot access it from my iMac even though File Sharing is turned on in the Air settings.

When I go to Network on Finder on my iMac and select my Air and hit Connect it asks for my user name and password but then it rejects them (the little window shakes).

 

[DeepIn2U]

How old is the MBA?
is file sharing disable or you have a firewall on either machine?
can you disconnect from your Wi-Fi and just use file sharing between the Macs?

 

[Alan6]

Same problem here. Worked fine until Beta 5. File sharing fails in the other direction as well. Big Sur can see my other computer and its volumes, but cannot access the volumes.

 

[Baltimore_Jack]

Same problem here. My iMac runs on Catalina, while my MacBook Air is running on Big Sur Public Beta. My MacBook Air recognizes the iMac, but I get an error trying to file share with the iMac. The iMac does not "see" the MacBook Air. File Sharing is "on" with both Macs. Interestingly enough, I can "see" the iMac desktop using Screen Sharing.

 

[matram]

People have reported that file sharing with "afp" works although "smb" is broken. Maybe try "go to ..." in finder and specify the adress of your machine with "afp" as the protocol?

 

[D.I. Shrager]

People have reported that file sharing with "afp" works although "smb" is broken. Maybe try "go to ..." in finder and specify the adress of your machine with "afp" as the protocol?

Can anyone explain AFP vs. SMB? I've looked at disk formatting, and SMB is not an option (in Big Sur)

 

[matram]

Afp and smb are two different protocols for accessing disks over a network. You specify these on the system where you mount the disks. It has nothing to with the formatting of the disk.

If you mount by specifying a url in finder you prefix the string with afp like this

afp://example.system.net/share

 

[Baltimore_Jack]

People have reported that file sharing with "afp" works although "smb" is broken. Maybe try "go to ..." in finder and specify the adress of your machine with "afp" as the protocol?

Thank you for the suggestion. Alas, it did not work for me.

 

[matram]

A bit of background. Afp stands for Apple File Protocol. This was Apples old protocol for file transfer, today depreceated. Apple is moving over to smb.

Smb stands for Server Message Block a Microsoft protocol which today exist as open source Samba and is widely used. A computer or NAS will often support multiple protocols and the client can choose.

 

[matram]

Thank you for the suggestion. Alas, it did not work for me.

You may want to check the logs on the source side. Failed logins should be logged with a reason. You can start looking in /var/log in terminal. I believe there is some reject log.

 

[D.I. Shrager]

Afp and smb are two different protocols for accessing disks over a network. You specify these on the system where you mount the disks. It has nothing to with the formatting of the disk.

If you mount by specifying a url in finder you prefix the string with afp like this

afp://example.system.net/share

Thank you. I've always just used the gui for that (sidebar-network-computer_name) -- is it now required I follow the above mentioned method?

 

[Lazarus Long]

This worked for me:

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/smbfs.kext

 

[Baltimore_Jack]

This worked for me:

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/smbfs.kext

Would you please clarify how you used that? Thank you.

 

[Lazarus Long]

Would you please clarify how you used that? Thank you.

Sure, just open the Terminal app and type the command. You'll have to enter your password. That's really it.

 

[Baltimore_Jack]

Sure, just open the Terminal app and type the command. You'll have to enter your password. That's really it.

Thank you! That allows me to access files on my iMac (Catalina OS) from my MacBook Air (Big Sur OS). I still cannot get the iMac to access files on the MacBook Air, but this is a huge help. What did the command do?

 

[Honza1]

Thank you! That allows me to access files on my iMac (Catalina OS) from my MacBook Air (Big Sur OS). I still cannot get the iMac to access files on the MacBook Air, but this is a huge help. What did the command do?

This command told the system to load driver for Samba (smb) protocol. Looks like current beta has bug and does not load smb driver (kext, kernel extension,...) automatically. Seems easy enough to be fixed in future release.

 

[Baltimore_Jack]

Big Sur Beta Version 11.0 just released appears to resolve at least part of this issue. I can now access files on my iMac (running Catalina) using my MacBook Air (running Big Sur). Alas, my iMac does recognize my MacBook Air as a server (so it doesn't go both ways).

 

[Bravo2zero]

Had same issue between MacBook and Mac mini , the new update has fixed this issue.

 

[drbill]

I am able to access all volumes of my Mac Pro (late 2013) running Catalina 10.15.7 with my new M1 MacBook Pro running Big Sur 11.0.1. Unable to access the M1 MacBook pro going the other way. Screen sharing works both ways.

 

[drbill]

Tried:

sharing via afp
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/smbfs.kext

No joy

Added my Home Folder to the shared folder pane on the M1 MBP and then can access it but all folders have the little red minus in the lower right corner and error message says I don't have permission to access