Why switch off SMB1

No work around, unless you roll back everything to s1, where it is still supported. But they’ve removed the ability to do this and who knows when/if they add it back. 
 

It’s a good thing to move on from smbv1 even though I know it sucks to have to buy and set it up a new nas.. 

Question: my WD Cloud device that does Sonos NAS duty got a firmware update in 2017 which says it now does SMB 3 by default. Sonos has been working fine with that since 2015 and continues to do so today on S1 with  2014 and prior Sonos hardware. I made no tweaks to Sonos settings when that firmware update was done, indeed I only uncovered this little nugget of information yesterday.

What does this mean? That the WD Cloud can do either SMB1 or 3? 

After last update all network shares broke and not returning shares on smb1-3

Android app cannot pin/unpin favorites anymore…

This is not acceptable sonos…

I have paid a steap amount off money for my setup.

Yes, and this is the way Sonos S2 worked for the last couple years, you choose.
I wonder why now, in the middle of the chaos with the app, they turned this off. Why didn’t they communicate a clear date in the future and send repeated notices and explain what it means

Never mind steap, I paid a steep amount for mine. 

I would guess with the new app and codebase it was an ideal time to not include v1 support, which even MS say not to use

For reasons known only to Sonos they chose not to disclose a summary any of the impactful changes or missing features prior to releasing the new app, preferring to say nothing other than all the existing features users love plus more in the run up to it’s release, with full knowledge that wasn’t the case.

I am curious why people think it is a problem for Sonos to fix and not something for the NAS manufacturer to get their act together and update. Are they complaining at their NAS makers to upgrade SMB support the same amount as they are at Sonos to support an out-dated and off by default for years protocol?

I think it’s a combination of a lack of understanding of the change by sonos owners and Sonos not communicating the removal date and what this actually means for users with older nas. Along with most of these people also pissed off about the new app. Some people are posting they are using a 15 year old router with a usb or sd card. They might not have even looked at the console or run an update on the device in years. This type of user needed more than an in app notification from Sonos, but then again maybe no amount of email or blog posts or notifications would have been enough.

Presumably Sonos could have detected the use of SMB V1 and started warning customers that it would be deprecated in the old app months ago. A direct warning to those who will be impacted usually gets their attention.

But then again hindsight is a wonderful gift. 

They sent an in app Notification. @Ken_Griffiths was smart enough to screen cap it.

the in app notification was sent 10 days before the change. But the notification said “in the coming Months”. So even if you understood you probably were surprised when it turned off 

Fair take! I first asked Sonos for SMB v2 six years ago …

And I posted SMB v2 directions for those using a Windows machine to host their library last month …

• Adding a Windows SMB Share, Step-by-Step

All that said, my desire was for Sonos to add support for SMB v2, not yank support for SMB v1. Doing so with very little advance warning has created a mess for many users.

They must have supported SMB V2 for at least 8 years as my current NAS was configured to use SMB V2 or V3 when I got it 8 years ago and it has always worked with Sonos.

According to the release notes it was added in version 13.4.1 (July 2021)
 

I do recall having to enable v1 in my nas samba config when returning to the Sonos ecosystem after years away from it, which was in June 2021 (according to my system details) but haven’t needed to keep it enabled when building and migrating to a replacement nas or testing things with other servers since then.

Samba.org only disabled v1 by default in 2019, so I would expect the vast majority of new NAS, routers with file sharing and similar style devices (especially consumer targeted rather than enterprise) to have shipped with v1 enabled up until then even if they only showed enabling/disabling v2/v3 as options in the interface.

After 2019 it would require more effort on a device manufacturers part to enable v1 in their firmware if using an upto date samba version (a big if), so new devices since then would be more likely to be off by default as the firmwares for new devices updated. There would still be an overlap on newly sold devices following 2019 due to existing unsold stock and manufacturers just being slow to update nas firmware, assuming they didn’t just end of life the product and all support.

Which would suggest that my NAS was updated by a firmware upgrade that changed the SMB default that I was not aware of. I did not know abut this setting until I checked it out of interest because of teh posts here.

Do you know if there was anything significant about July 2021?

Nothing significant in the wider software/IT side of things, it is just when Sonos released v2/v3 support to their system.

Why it took so long for Sonos to add something MS released in 2006, Linux and open source projects added in 2012 and both had disabled by default a couple of years before only Sonos can explain. Maybe it wasn’t considered a priority, maybe they were waiting for their chip supplier to update software development kits. 🤷

Low powered embedded devices are often in a behind the times situation as the device manufacturer is dependant on the chip supplier updating development kits and drivers. Companies like Apple, Samsung avoid this dependency by controlling both the chip design, production and the software used in their devices, but they also operate at a very different scale and wider product market to Sonos.

As a consumer, while I understand potential technical behind the scenes reasons, I’m paying a premium for someone else to sell me a working product because I’m not interested in building and maintaining something myself.

Smb support has always been an advantage of Sonos for my usage. Being able to point at a shared folder, each speaker can independently access is far nicer than having to run UPnP/dlna server and deal with the random mess of compatibility that brings.

While file share access made sense when Sonos first started out, I suspect if Sonos were starting again now, like 99% of other network Player devices they would just use upnp/dlna rather than file share and avoid the long term development/support commitment file share support brings.

The success or otherwise of upnp/DLNA depends on how it's implemented by the manufacturer - some versions stray from the standard and can be worse than useless. 

Indeed, It’s as much the client device manufacture as the server and control software, with the added fun of the switch/router/WiFi access point manufactures random ability to get igmp snooping/multicast handling right. So many moving parts and variations behind 4 little letters. 🙄

This is where protocols such as slimproto and RAAT become escape routes for users trapped by a 'proprietary' system.  But they aren't even close to plug'n'play so remain ruled out for the majority. Sort of a no pain, no gain situation. 

I am not against higher and more secured versions of Samba, but please do leave an option for those who don't want to update!

At what potential lawsuit situation? Even frivolous lawsuits would be expensive (if they’re possible, I have no idea). I assume there was a reason why SMB v1 was disabled on my Western Digital NAS, too…but I think I’m lucky that I have one where you can modify that setting, my understanding is that some of them don’t give the user access to do so. 

It’s a bit of a damned if they do, damned if they don’t situation that crops up all the time when companies finally enforce something long overdue, especially in the consumer market.

Sonos should have dealt with this years ago with clear communication and timelines. They could even have piggybacked the change onto the increasing requests and pleas from Microsoft to disable it as supporting justification when the inevitable loss of access due to consumer nas/routers not supporting v2 occurred.

Airgetlam wrote:

At what potential lawsuit situation? Even frivolous lawsuits would be expensive (if they’re possible, I have no idea). I assume there was a reason why SMB v1 was disabled on my Western Digital NAS, too…but I think I’m lucky that I have one where you can modify that setting, my understanding is that some of them don’t give the user access to do so.

I guess it’s a cultural thing, I’ve never understood the ‘lawsuit’ as a reaction to everything someone doesn’t like. What are you going to claim for?

“Your honour, Sonos owe me damages for finally updating my internet connected device to modern security recommendations. I demand you make them undo the changes and reimplement insecure protocols against the recommendations of the protocol inventor (Microsoft) and the entire IT industry security community”

Microsoft got increasingly desperate in their pleas for people to stop using smb v1, even with people who were supposed to be IT professionals

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

Given there seem to be a significant number of SMBv1 devices out in the wild, Sonos could easily have left v1 in place while adding v2/3 for those of a nervous disposition. 

Not everyone wants a new usb router or another expensive clunky black box or to run a windows machine 24/7.

In fact, they could just as easily reinstate SMBv1 (but on current performance, pigs might fly first). 

Only Sonos really know the answer to that and they aren’t keen on sharing anything 😞 Forums and social media generally provide a snapshot of people having trouble, rather than the number of active customers. I only created an account after years of trouble free usage because I needed to remove my Port, so wanted to perform the impossible task of adding a Wifi network to the remaining speakers. Instead I’ve had to put a speaker in the cupboard with my switch to act as an Ethernet->Sonosnet bridge that the Port had been providing while sorting out my replacement system.

It would have been really cool if they had released a Valve style hardware survey every month, showing percentage usage of which streaming services people use, which hardware is active, what features people are using. Unfortunately the HiFi, AV and artificially restricted content providers worlds have a lot to learn about how transparency and openness is a benefit 😞

Every company I’ve worked at has had to make decisions around which versions of browser, Android, iOS, windows do we support. There were clear regional differences across the world and as a company we had to consider the impact of dropping support for things, especially in the ie6/windows XP transition. It certainly lost us some clients at the time and sales to some countries, but long term it was a benefit for the company and the <4% of impacted clients manageable with plenty of clear communication and dates of impact provided in advance.

Would that include the silent majority?  Many of whom, on discovering their speaker no longer works as before, just consign it to the landfill.  Or stick it in the cupboard. I've got a couple of old laptops been gathering dust for years after they ground to a halt after one more update.! 

Any majority change, whether vocal or silent, would be visible or potentially identifiable depending what data is shared, but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing when shifts occur. There is always a fine line between sharing interesting/fun data and exposing too much which can stray into real company confidential. It takes a different mindset and culture from the top down and would certainly be a bold step, potentially industry leading, in an industry that doesn’t traditionally operate that way. It’s not a seismic shift from the current quarterly financial or board reports many companies already publish though. 🤷

It’s the same sort of shift many tech companies went through where every mistake or outage was a secret, to it now being far more normal to accept things go wrong and explain why. Companies are full of people and everyone makes mistakes, everyone can relate to that.

I expect myself to be in a niche group of a small group of users, as I buy digital downloads to own and use both a local library built from physical and digital download & own media as well as streaming. I have no idea though. Some people I work with have never bought and don’t own a physical or digital version of any media.

Over time my usage pattern has changed, I rarely buy a cd anymore, favouring a drm free digital download when I buy something I like enough to want to keep. I stream internet radio and from an online service daily for listening and discovery. 🤷

Bravo, @Greenland, very well stated!

Without transparency and clear signals, customers are left to read the tealeaves and reach their own conclusions. As I’ve noted elsewhere on these forums, Sonos is sending the message—intentionally or not—that local library music is way less important than streaming music. What I hear is “Moving forward, Sonos may not be a good solution for those placing a high priority on local library music.” If those conclusions are misguided, Sonos needs to actively change their messaging … real soon now.