I emailed the CEO of Sonos, Patrick Spence.  Below is what I wrote.

Dear Patrick,

I wish to protest at the recent announcement by Sonos to end support for SMBv1 and (HTTP) which appeared in the Sonos app this weekend.  (See screenshot at end of email.)

I have two NAS devices, both of which are so old, they only support SMBv1.  One device holds a digitised copy of my music collection (for use with my Sonos system), the other holding files, family videos and photographs etc.

Although I agree that both SMBv1 and HTTP protocols are less secure than their successor technologies, the decision to use them rests with the customer and not with Sonos.  The use of SMBv1 poses no risk to Sonos, only to me, and that’s my decision.  Sonos is not the judge, jury, and executioner of how I choose to access my own music via my Sonos system in my own home.

I do not use music streaming services, so any change that renders SMBv1 unavailable to me effectively renders my whole Sonos system obsolete.  By all means warn the user that SMBv1 and HTTP are dated, less secure,  and “may” pose a security risk, but do not prevent their use. 

As a recently retired, 68 year old, I don’t have the money to simply purchase something for the sake of it, especially when the NAS devices in question are still perfectly serviceable.  Unless Sonos would like to reimburse me for the 10 Sonos devices I currently use in my home, or buy me a new NAS device so I may continue to enjoy my music, I suggest you rethink an ill-conceived draconian policy that will not win you any support, and alienate some of your existing customer base.

Gosh, I just logged in to see if there’d been any replies to my original post… seems I kicked the hornets nest somewhat!

As a user of Sonos since 2008 and with a large library ripped to FLAC, I find it staggering that Sonos almost expects me to have some kind of knowledge of SMBx in order to continue making informed decisions about the continuation of use of their products. So much for a simple user experience that “works flawlessly out of the box”.

Shame.

I would also like to understand how library access is going to work going forward. For example, if old search is being discontinued without incorporating library searching into new search, then that will make S2 harder to use with a NAS music library. 

A lot of people use their routers with a usb drive plugged in. Most of these routers only support SMBv1. I have been using this method for 15yrs. I recently set up a system for a friend who has the latest EE router that I think only does SMBv1. Having spent circa £2500 on Sonos Gear he is going to be delighted when I tell him his library is not going to work after the May "upgrade".

I had a pop up message on my Sonos app that in a couple of months time in a new version of the S2 app the ability to have a NAS music library was going to be discontinued permanently because of security concerns about SMB V1. I can’t find out any more detail on the Sonos web site or these forums. It’ll be very disappointing as I have versions of songs I haven’t found on music services. I’m sure others do too.

Do any of the learned guys on this forum know any more about this?

Is anybody sure?!

I took this to mean that they are dropping support for SMBv1, not local libraries altogether. It probably could’ve been worded better if that’s the case.

I think this would be a problem for S1 owners only, because S1 does not allow for SMBv2 to be used. S2 useres should not be affected by this as S2 does SMBv2.

I’m not sure what marketing material you’re looking at, but the marketing material I’ve seen doesn’t really talk about airplay, bluetooth, TV, or Aux sources either….and those aren’t going away.  

Thread below provides some context for the Sonos bug that Ninjabob describes above. 
 

jafsmith - if so I had the same dream!  And I’ve spent time looking at a replacement router that will support NAS drive attachment.   Wandered into this discussion just trying to validate if Sonos pop up was accurate.  Wouldn’t you think a change like this would be front and center on the Sonos Support web site?   Or at least clearly delineated in an email to customers from Sonos - with timeframe for when support goes away.

I saw a pop up, too, and didn’t get a screencap. But my takeaway--which may or may not be accurate--was that Sonos was discontinuing system access to a library on a computer because of security concerns. Instead, only NAS libraries were going to be supported. Did I dream this?

To me it is quite clear that http and SMBv1 support are going to be removed form S2 because of safety concerns. SMBv2 is not mentioned, so no changes there. How is this unclear?

Dear all, 

help me out here… What is, in fact, going to become outdated? (S1… Is that “Sonos 1”, or some kind of NAS Generation thing?)

Certain older NAS (I have an old MyCloud, and indeed, suddenly, features are very lacking), or old Sonos speakers (I have 3 “original” S1s). I wouldn’t mind updating my NAS, but if I need to update all my speakers, SONOS is out. I only listen to my own library.

I’m also wondering if merely downloading an old version of the app would solve it. And: is that even possible?

Alex

I have a 2TB HDD connected to the latest EE /BT router and I'm quite sure it's SMBv1. A pity about the downgrade of the app, which has obviously been redesigned to appeal to the "Sonos, play a Feel Good Friday playlist!" crowd, which is Sonos' core market now. It's particularly disappointing given that the current app has been working so smoothly over the past six months or so, far better than it ever has.

I was going to revert to a laptop / stereo setup but instead I'm utilising a mini-PC (a freebie from Amazon Vine!) with my hard drive attached to it, using Plex. I've indexed my collection of 3,500+ FLAC albums, checking, double checking and triple checking that I ticked the option to use my tagging, not Plex's! The mini-PC is connected to my TV by HDMI for when I need to update my Plex library, but I don't need to have the screen on for general use - I turn it on and shut it down (properly) using the power button.

It's not as straightforward as it used to be, obviously, and although it's not a massive amount, having a mini-PC on 16 hours a day costs money.

Last week I switched from the ‘native’ Sonos music library sharing (SonosLibraryShare.exe) built into the Windows desktop client to an SMBv2 share. Everything worked—indexing included—and my library is 20K tracks. I mention this as a very recent datapoint for you.

Only suggestion I have: start off with a tiny subset of your library, say a single artist. If nothing else, that will make the testing cycle super-fast. Once you get everything ironed out with such a mini-library, you ought to be able to throw your entire music library into the fray.

Sonos has acknowledged that this bug exists. It’s not user error. Your library of 20k is too small to be affected. 
 

If you have the disk space create a second copy of your library and see if it will index the entire 40k.

So this morning’s update 80.00.08 finally terminated my connection to my 15-year old Buffalo Linkstation NAS as it only runs SMB1

Can anyone recommend an alternative please? 4TB should do it...

That’s sad. 

I was expecting further updates, following this storm of comments, would improve the situation, not worsen it. 

But I’m interested in this as well.

(And happy to understand that an update of NAS, and not speakers, would solve it.)

Although, to be honest, I’m still inclined to wait for a few updates.

Worst case for someone on an SMB1 only NAS would be having to add an SMB1 to SMB 2 and/or 3 gateway. Not rocket science and a cheap Pi Zero will serve well.

This also works well for sharing NFS to Sonos.

Raspberry Pi SMB v1 Gateway to Sonos

https://stan-miller.livejournal.com/357.html

How are Sonos legal obligations for S2 different to what they already declare to be the case in S1 - where it's basically use at your own risk etc.?  Has the reason for some users needing to activate SMBv1 on their S2 systems been explained before?   Hopefully it is understood (and resolved if this change is implemented) or there could be many more people affected who aren't currently.

We had the Squeezebox line back then until Logitech pulled the plug on it, no idea why! The Squeezebox range could be controlled via the web too, 20yrs before Sonos, had some fun with that

The Squeezebox Radio was a great bit of kit, battery/mains powered with an LCD display, years before Sonos came up with a battery speaker. I miss mine 

Was there an alternative then? But yes, being able to play owned music anywhere in the home is a big draw to the minority that still enjoys that feature and I am one of such people. I am on S1 and these Sonos moves don’t bother me.

I’ve been following this thread with interest as I am an Asus router user who suffers from the library indexing issue. Pre-update, fixing to SMBv1 allowed indexing to complete, but now that option has gone with SMBv1 being disabled on S2.

I’m not doing anything rash because Sonos has said that library fixes are coming mid-June. We will have to wait and see if indexing has been fixed.

If not, I might consider the Raspberry Pi option. I see that I can buy a Pi 5 starter pack for less than £100, and my USB drive could be plugged into it. Some Linux education on my part, but I reckon I could manage. I also believe I could run Plex on the Pi as I would have no need for transcoding my MP3s on the fly (which I guess would need more horsepower). Lots of people in the community bang on about Plex, so maybe I should have a look

And the Pi 5 has a power button, so I assume that when I’m away with work I could simply power down the Pi as it wouldn’t be needed.

Anyway, fingers crossed I won’t need any more hardware, but if issues persist it may be time for some Pi

Unless Sonos can somehow keep these unsecure protocols enabled without actually supporting them, I don’t see how that work exactly.  If the feature is there, Sonos sort of has to guarantee that it works as described and doesn’t pose a risk to your system.  They would also need to provide bug support if some issues is found.  So, as much as you might feel that it isn’t Sonos responsibility, it may very well be.

That said, the fact that it remains enabled on S1 makes me wonder if S2 isn’t going to remove the feature, but they won’t provide any support for it.  Again, I’m not sure if they can do that realistically and legally.