Mac OS Big Sur Drops AFP

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Mac OS Big Sur Drops AFP

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NAS
DS218+
Operating system
  1. macOS
Mobile operating system
  1. iOS
The title says it all. While AFP had been officially deprecated, it still continued to be included right through Catalina.

Big Sur changes that, the long unmaintained afp is gone, with SMB being the only native file-sharing (as a server) option. SMB 3 is the default version.

This will affect network shares and especially Time Machine. Many of us stuck with afp for Time Machine compatibility, but if you haven't already made the switch to smb, best to do it before upgrading to Big Sur to avoid compatibility problems.

New network TM destinations are still created with a sparsebundle, however it is now APFS rather than HFS+ formatted internally. Existing HFS+ sparesebundles will still work and are not converted to APFS. Backup performance is dramatically improved as the APFS makes use of snapshots for each backup. In other words, your TM backups via SMB from Catalina should continue to work, but won't have the speed advantages unless one creates a brand new backup destination.
 
While AFP had been officially deprecated
I still have all my NAS connections running via AFP towards from BigSur.

Screenshot 2020-11-19 at 07.47.35.png


Time Machine compatibility, but if you haven't already made the switch to smb, best to do it before upgrading to Big Sur to avoid compatibility problems
Haven't had a single failed backup since. TM just picked up where it left off.
 
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A very quick google and news/review articles are saying AFP has been removed while forums are reporting AFP client connections still work.

I've not had time to check but it is sounding that AFP server (e.g. within Sharing preference pane) may have been removed so the macOS client devices can no longer run as server (or not through the GUI?). I've not run the macOS server for a long, since they effectively made it an iOS manager, so can't say what that supports.

'Connect to Server...' in Finder is sounding like it's still working for afp://... connections.


I tried Big Sur as an upgrade over Catalina and it ran impossibly slowly and some apps wouldn't launch. I then did a fresh install on a mounted Samsung T5 AFPS volume and then migrated Catalina on to it. That ran well, and the apps worked, but I really dislike the new theme, Control Center, and Notifications. I used to have Find My... and iStat Menu widgets and these are gone, and seeing as one was Apple's I have no expectation that it will come back. This is symptomatic of being told what to like, "no you don't like that, you like this" (isn't that akin to gaslighting?). And the light theme seems to be virtually WHITE and gappy.

Oh well, it was too early to really move and I just wanted to see what iOS on a Mac looked like.


And now there's talk that not all Apple processes will be filtered down VPNs. I'm still catching up on this (search macOS big sur "vpn").
 
Does synology nas work as a time machine server with smb or does it require afp? I just ordered ds1520+. 😀 I don’t want to use afp at all.
 
I think I’ll skip this Big Sur thing (I don’t even like the name).
This year has been (and still is) so complicated. The last thing I need is to Big Sur it… 😷
I have to say that so far it's been the 1st OS after Mavericks that's really solid. Ok and ElCapitan.
 
Indeed, afp is missing as a server but the client code appears to work as well as it ever did. Still, I am now using SMB on Macs for TM. The writing is clearly on the wall…
 
I deleted the time machine set up to NAS (I am on Big Sur) as it said it was starting a complete new copy (250 G). My wife's MBP with Catalina continues to backup to NAS. (I also have both being TM backups to USB port attached WD drive on NAS which continues to work for both). I am about to attempt to set up TM again to NAS so what I think folks are saying is to use SMB rather than AFP on Bonjour?
 
Just an update. I started over and set up the time machine. After 6 hours I had a new one and it has backed up twice since. I believe it will be fine until it reaches the limit I have set 1T. I expect it to say again that there its no now space to backup.... The mechanism whereby the oldest copies are deleted seems to not happen.
 
It sounds like Big Sur can make AFP connections to an external AFP source but no longer provides AFP as a server option itself if you were to enable File Sharing on Big Sur. That makes sense in what people are describing.
 

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