Fixing slow macOS finder connection to Linux Samba server

As a bonus, this will also enable searching on Samba too.

Problem

I have a external HDD plugged into a Raspi which acts as a seed box of some kind. The files are served with Samba. The problem was:

• Listing large amount of file in a directory takes ages.
• Search doesn’t work at all, it just got stuck at “Searching”.
• Transfer speed was very slow.

Solution

After much searching, the fix is quite simple actually.

First, SSH into the server with $ ssh serverIp

Then edit the Samba config by typing $ vim /etc/samba/smb.conf

Once it is open add these lines to your particularly slow Samba shares:

vfs objects = fruit
fruit:aapl = yes
fruit:encoding = native
fruit:locking = none
fruit:metadata = stream
fruit:resource = file

Lastly restart the server with $sudo service smbd restart

Result

Now the listing large directory should be pretty fast, search should work as normal and transfer speed should be around 10x faster.

References

VFS Fruit

Forum post by TimFitz