MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro File Server and Immediate Deletion

[kittonian]

Very exciting, I finally upgraded my old 2010 Mac Pro to a brand new M2 Ultra Mac Studio. However, in my 5,1 Mac Pro I have a bunch of very large hard drives and since I would need to buy a TB drive array and connect to my Mac Studio (can't afford it at the moment after this giant purchase), I setup my 5,1 MP to be a file server. All is working great except that there is no network trash and when I need to delete a file, it gets deleted immediately with no hope of recovery.

Of course I have backups and can restore if absolutely necessary, but I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this. It seems very strange that the only option is delete something and you're screwed.

The 5,1 is running OpenCore and Monterey 12.5.1, and the new Studio is running 13.4. I want to set this all up on the 5,1 until I'm able to afford the drive array.

Thanks!

 

[w1z]

Congrats!

File sharing under macOS is very limited.

You've got several options -

1. Find and run third-party macOS file sharing apps that have file recovery / recycle bin feature built-in on your 5,1 (mac studio may just require a client)
2. Keep your 5,1 on macOS and virtualize a NAS OS like Synology DSM with assigned storage
3. Convert and use your 5,1 as an ESXi server and run a dedicated file server with file recovery built-in or a NAS VM like the one above

 

[mattspace]

All is working great except that there is no network trash and when I need to delete a file, it gets deleted immediately with no hope of recovery.

I was researching this topic last night with regards to Synology SMB shares, and it's very hard to find a definitive answer as to whether macOS can be made to support network trash.

 

[mayuka]

I'm in the process of converting my old Mac Pro 5.1 to a file server as well. I'm using FreeNAS. But there is no reason it should not work with Linux or an older version of Macos too.

Bottom line, you need to enable a few special flags "recycle bin" in your smb.conf to get support for Trash, Spotlight, Time Machine ...

See these pages for more info:

Chapter 23. Stackable VFS modules

Samba, macOS and Spotlight: Possible on FreeBSD?

I have researched online resources for quite some time now, did my own testing and am now turning to this board to possibly help me along. The scenario is as follows: Apple has deprecated the AFP protocol some time ago. Starting with macOS 10.13, AFP will not be able to serve files from a APFS...

forums.freebsd.org

It will be a bit "techy" though

Here is the relevant bit from my old smb.conf for a time machine backup volume. I did not use it anymore as backup over network is extremely slow. But you can use these options as a start.

[tm-backup]
        path = /vol/tm-backup
        browsable = no
        writable = yes
        only guest = no
        valid users = tm-backup
        public = no
        spotlight = yes
        vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
        fruit:aapl = yes
        fruit:time machine = yes

Let is know your progress!!

 

[arw]

This is the workaround I'm using since 5 years for lack of alternatives:
Running Windows on the hosting side, you can make use of the Volume-Shadow-Copy-Service (VSS) to automatically create snapshots of the data drives in fixed intervals (hourly, daily, …)
Then I have to RDP/VNC into the machine to restore a previous version of a file/folder.
In 'task scheduler' I created a daily task for:
wmic with the parameter shadowcopy call create Volume=D:\
To only keep two weeks of snapshots, I set the limit to 14.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\VSS\Settings]
"MaxShadowCopies"=dword:0000000e

In Mojave and older on the client side, it was possible to access these VSS snapshots over network.
Following this thread with interest.

 

[kittonian]

Thank you all for your responses. After reading them, perhaps I was not as clear as I thought in my original post.

I want to use the MP 5,1 as the file server right now. Down the road, I'll be purchasing a TB RAID array, but not for some time.

I looked into FreeNAS yesterday but did not come across running it natively on Mac OS, only Linux. I do not (and cannot) run Linux on the 5,1. It runs 12.5.1 and will stay that way. It also serves as my Plex server and my Apple Music shared library.

The only issue I am looking to solve is to have proper trash capabilities on the network share (originating on the MP 5,1 and being mounted on my Mac Studio, my wife's MP 5,1 and her Macbook pro).

I have no problem with "techy". I develop software for a living . Just haven't yet found a solution for my scenario.

 

[mayuka]

Well, Samba runs natively on Mac too. In fact, a certain version is already installed by default. You can install the most recent version from github (https://github.com/samba-team/samba) or use a version from homebrew or macports. These versions differ from the version Apple uses and have more options.

 

[chrfr]

Well, Samba runs natively on Mac too. In fact, a certain version is already installed by default. You can install the most recent version from github (https://github.com/samba-team/samba) or use a version from homebrew or macports. These versions differ from the version Apple uses and have more options.

MacOS hasn’t included Samba in many years. As of Lion, 10.7, Apple switched to its own implementation of an SMB file server.