EDIT : I have solved this issue… sort of. Read the end of this initial post to find out how.
I’ve just built a new NAS and I’ve installed TrueNAS CORE on it. I’m a FreeNAS user so I had to learn a few new things, specifically : how to setup user accounts. FreeNAS lets you create your volumes, datasets and shares as “root” but TrueNAS is a bit more “responsible” and forces you to actually create users and assign permissions to them. I like that, safety is good. Except when it doesn’t work.
So far I’ve only created one user account (for myself) and set a password. Back on my workstation (running Windows 10) I connect a share and provide that password. Everything works perfectly. I turn off the NAS for the night and on the next morning Windows tells me it “couldn’t reconnect all network drives”.
I couldn’t figure out why so I disconnected the share and tried to connect to it again. Windows tells me my password is wrong. But I knew it wasn’t. I log on to the NAS, set the user’s password again, and now I can use the share.
It’s the same thing every time I turn off or reboot the NAS. I’ve tried Googling this issue but got no result. This suggests I’m doing something very basic very wrong because I’m too dumb to use a computer… but for the life of me I don’t know what. Help !!! 
SOLUTION : someone pointed out that this was a known issue with TrueNAS-12.0-U2.1 (my version at the time) and that it was fixed in -U3. Earlier this week I tested TrueNAS-12.0-U4 on my workstation using VMWare and confirmed that the issue is fixed. I have since installed TrueNAS-12.0-U4 on my NAS and now my user passwords survive server reboots.
How did you install the OS? Is the NAS safely writing out changes to disk before shutting down?
As a test, did you try exporting the pool, rebooting, and importing the pool?
Assuming you try and click the share icon and it still says that? Mine says that all the time waking up from sleep state.
I use FreeNAS, but not TrueNAS (yet). The behavior you describe is a known “feature” of FreeNAS if the WebUI is not used to set the password for User Accounts. Any chance you used the CLI to set the user account password?
No, I’ve seen the warning that changes made in the CLI will not be saved, so I’m doing absolutely everything through the GUI.
The NAS is built on an old intel Core i7-975 / X58 platform, so I had to record the TrueNAS CORE ISO to CD-ROM and temporarily attach a CD-ROM to the machine to install it. The system disk is a SATA SSD connected to one of the motherboard’s SATA ports. Regarding “safely writing out changes to disk”, well this is the only setting so far that suffers from this problem so I have no reason to suspect the system disk.
I did not try exporting / re-importing the pool. To be clear, you are talking about the pool that TrueNAS is installed on, or the pool which contains my data ?
No, it will ask for my credentials again because the password is no longer valid. I need to set the password again through the TrueNAS web UI and then Windows opens the share without any issue when I double-click on it.
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I found a bug report online that is consistent with your experience, with some comments and suggested workarounds:
SMB User Password Lost on Reboot
or https://jira.ixsystems.com/browse/NAS-109032 if link doesn’t work.
It might contain or lead to helpful information.
The report claims there is a fix in v12.0-U3; not sure what version you are using.
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I’m using v12.0-U2.1
This sounds like what I’m experiencing. Good catch !
Unfortunately the NAS we’re discussing is air-gapped. I’ll need to find out how to update TrueNAS without connecting it to the internet.
You can upgrade using the installation media, the example is more clear in the FreeNAS docs link
Maybe a stupid question but I notice that you are using a pretty old platform.
Did you check when on cold reboot if the bios still hold its settings like date and time etc?
I’ve had to play around in the BIOS a lot to turn this old PC into a NAS, it does keep its settings so I’m assuming the CR2032 on it is still good. I don’t remember ever replacing it, though… I don’t know if it’s capable of lasting 12 years. That’s worth checking though, nice idea !
Hello everyone. I’m quickly reviving this thread to let you all know that the problem has been solved, and how. @Caped_Kibitzer was right, using a newer version of the OS (specifically TrueNAS-12.0-U4) fixed the problem. Thanks to everyone who replied, and stay awesome.
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