VMWare Fusion 8.5.10 can no longer access network drives

[DKeim]

Yesterday, all of my virtual Windows and Linux machines can no longer access/mount an network drives.  It is like something stopped working for the network within VMWare.

I have some work-arounds in order for move files between, but would like to solve this.  Any thoughts?

BTW:  because of the current hardware I am unable to upgrade to higher versions of VMWare Fusion.

[wila]

Hi,

Reboot host?
Switch from NAT to Bridged (or the other way around)?

--
Wil

[DKeim]

Very interestingly.  To test what you had questions on, I did reboot the Mac.  I want to shorten this focus a little bit.  The one device on the network that WAS there before and WAS accessible, is one of my NAS devices.  (Synology DS1618+).  It has a "Public" folder that I have been using for ALL of my computers as a repository for moving items back and forth.  Normally, it was mounted two ways.  \\DS1618\Public or \\192.168.1.48\Public.

Then brought up one of the VM clients Windows Servers.  It had no changes.  I would not access the above device.  So, following your second question, I shutdown the client, switch from Bridged to NAT and brought it back up.  Not only could I still not access the NAS, but now all of my other connections to SMB folders on a VM Client Linux device failed to mount.

So, I shut the Windows server down again and switched back to Bridged.  Brought it back up and my Linux folders mounted.  But now here is big difference.  It seems like NOW I can see more network devices.  I will stop now and give you a picture of a change.  I have attached three jpg files, VM1 and VM2.  Prior to doing ANY of the above tasks, and when I would double-click on "view workgroup computers", I would get the results seen in VM1.jpg.  Now, when I try that, I am getting the results seen in VM2.jpg.  That really excited me as now, I can see the more important pieces of my network.  DS1618 is now present.  However, when I attempt to mount the Public folder from it, I am asked for username/password but just get what you see in image VM3.jpg.

I should add that the second VM Windows Server can now see just about ALL of the network devices and can access both DS1618 and DS1718 WITHOUT username/password.  AND, I did not do ANYTHING to this VM Client.

This is just plain weird.

[DKeim]

Wil sent me an email, but when I responded, it would not go through, so I came here to respond only to find that his/er email was not here.  But, I think it just came to me generally from the VMware Community.

This has NOT been solved and the VMware Client that I am most worried about is unable to view my Workgroup network.  I need to find out why.

[wila]

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@DKeim wrote:

Wil sent me an email, but when I responded, it would not go through, so I came here to respond only to find that his/er email was not here.  But, I think it just came to me generally from the VMware Community.

This has NOT been solved and the VMware Client that I am most worried about is unable to view my Workgroup network.  I need to find out why.

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Call me properly confused..
AFAICT I did not reply. Also note that I do not contact people directly by email, but instead answer here via the forum.

For me direct email support is linked with "paid consultancy" and I'm not always offering that.

I remember looking at your reply and being more confused. Wondering if it might have been a Synology update (which I checked the release notes for). But couldn't quite explain what you saw, which is why you got no reply from me.. I thought some more and then got side tracked by work that needed my attention. Talking about work...

--
Wil

[DKeim]

I guess I am a little confused as well.  I did get an email from the VMware Community.  The subject line was "Did you get the answer you needed?" and I just assumed it was from you.  Sorry.  

As far as Synology goes.  At the time that the issue happened, there had been on updates to the Synology device.  And all of this appears to be happening only to my VM Clients.  Some worse than others.

I have this Synology shared folder that I use on ALL of my systems regardless of VM or Physical.  I run all of my machines 24/7, so it is not like I would be doing anything in particular.  I do shut my VM clients down just about every weekend and do backups of them all.  Then on Monday, I crank them up one by one and about in the same order and I wait until each one is up before starting up the next one.  From another Mac, I brought up two Linux VM Clients Anakin and Yoda.  These are needed to the two servers that reside on my main Mac Pro.  Next I brought up Degoba (Windows 7 Ultimate) and saw no issues.  Then I brought up Aladdin (Windows Server 2003) and right off the bat, it told me that it could not connect to all of the network drives.  It was only one drive, the shared folder.  It connected just fine with the Linux system Anakin where it connect 4 shared Anakin folders.  They work just fine.  It was just the NAS shared folder that would not connect.  So, I removed the connect and double clicked to re-map the drive.  And that is when it told me that my workgroup "SOFTEK-NET" was not accessible.  Other VM Clients seem to be able to stay Connect to this drive, but all of them seem to have some part of issues.  But, I am most concerned about Aladdin.  I have about 50 customers on this device that I do some work for and the normal process is to complete work there and then place on the NAS shared folder so I can deliver to customer by email on the Mac Pro.  Sorry, I get long winded.

[wila]

Hi,

Windows Server 2003 might be configured to use the network protocol SMBv1 and I would not be surprised if that protocol is no longer provided by Synology (it should not) as it is considered very outdated and unsafe.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/storage-at-microsoft/stop-using-smb1/ba-p/425858

A quick google suggests to me that you should be able to enable SMBv2 on Windows 2003 server and perhaps that Synology still carries support for that.

--
Wil

[DKeim]

Very interesting.  I will review and see what I can do.

[wila]

My google fu failed.. Windows Server 2003 only supports SMBv1 and that's why you can't access the Synology (and have problems access your network).

Not fixable for Windows Server 2003, you'll have to migrate to a newer OS.

edit: Perhaps you can tell Synology to allow SMBv1, but I strongly advice against that. Having said that... https://www.synology.com/en-global/security/advisory/Precaution_for_a_PotentialSMBVulnerability

I don't use SMB shares on my synology, but there's the settings.

--
Wil