Brian S. Campbell

Q: Back to My Mac stopped working

This is a repeat of another post I started. I mistakenly clicked the "This Solved my Question" link before it was actually solved

 

Anyway, I'm seeing some odd behavior from BTMM. In the morning/evening I seem to be able to connect to other machines (most of the time). During the day however, connections are sporadic at best and I seem to get kicked off a lot. I'm the family "IT guy" so I remotely manage computers for my wife and I, my parents and my brother and his wife and their business. Here's a quick rundown...

 

Michigan: MacBook & iMac running OS X 10.9 and ARD 3.7 connected to Time Capsule

Wyoming: Several MacBooks running both 10.9 (ARD 3.7) and 10.8.5 (ARD 3.6.2) connected to Linksys Router

Colorado: MacBook & Mini running both 10.9 (ARD 3.7) and 10.8.5 (ARD 3.6.2) connected to Airport Extreme

 

I'm trying to admin from my MacBook: 10.9/ARD 3.7. Both from work and from home (Colorado locations)

 

Anyway, regardless of the combination of OS/ARD/Router (at least as far as I can tell). I'm having a very hard time establishing and maintaining connections with any of these machines and it seems to be worse in the afternoon than in the morning. The error i get is always 'Connection failed to "hostName"'

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 12:50 PM

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Q: Back to My Mac stopped working

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  • by Treyberto,

    Treyberto Treyberto Nov 7, 2013 9:10 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 9:10 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell

    Looks like what's working for a lot of people (myself included) is to delete the Screensharingd from the list in firewall. Once I did that, I was able to get to my mac without disabling the firewall. Hope this helps.

  • by Brian S. Campbell,

    Brian S. Campbell Brian S. Campbell Nov 7, 2013 12:44 PM in response to Treyberto
    Level 1 (82 points)
    Wireless
    Nov 7, 2013 12:44 PM in response to Treyberto

    @Treyberto, i assume you're doing this in ther terminal? In the firewall preferences there's no option to delete the entry. I would have to disable Remote Management from the Sharing preferences to remove it...obviously that would cause an issue

  • by Treyberto,Helpful

    Treyberto Treyberto Nov 7, 2013 12:48 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 7, 2013 12:48 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

    Hi Brian,

    No. I removed this from the firewall pref pane. Don't confuse Screensharing with Screensharingd. The latter is in the list below.  The list above the separator can't be modified but the list below can. That's where screensharingd can be found.

  • by Brian S. Campbell,

    Brian S. Campbell Brian S. Campbell Nov 8, 2013 7:39 AM in response to Treyberto
    Level 1 (82 points)
    Wireless
    Nov 8, 2013 7:39 AM in response to Treyberto

    Thanks for the clarification!

  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Nov 8, 2013 8:19 AM in response to paul_nyrup
    Level 6 (10,497 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 8, 2013 8:19 AM in response to paul_nyrup

    In Mavericks /SystemPreferences/iCoud/  there certainly is an entry called Back To My Mac to check or uncheck....

  • by 101gildedlily,

    101gildedlily 101gildedlily Dec 16, 2013 1:29 PM in response to Treyberto
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Dec 16, 2013 1:29 PM in response to Treyberto

    I have been having trouble with back to my mac not being able to pass my router although I have an airport extreme and have set everything up for port forwarding and DHCD reservations for my main computer.  I also cannot wake up my computer with all the correct settings in place.  All software is up to date.  A work around that works for me is to wake up my computer with Mochasoft VNC lite, then launch Logmein (Logmein will not wake up the computer).  These problems exist within as well as outside my home wifi coverage. 

     

    I guess my question is why Mochasoft VNC can wake up my computer and the other applications cannot.  Just very curious.

     

    Gildedlily

  • by andijames,

    andijames andijames Dec 17, 2013 3:06 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 17, 2013 3:06 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell

    Gents,

     

    I think i've come across a solution for this issue. I don't want to spam the forum so will link to the 'fix' that i've documented below. Seems to have done the trick for a few users

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/24142589#24142589

     

    Hope this helps!

     

    A

  • by SingaporeJames,

    SingaporeJames SingaporeJames Apr 22, 2014 6:29 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 22, 2014 6:29 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

    The issue definetly seems to be an issue with Mavericks.  it's hit or miss on a daily basis, I have not made any changes to my systems and yesterday it worked perfectly all day...today not at all.

     

    Funny thing is, I can get into another iMac that I administer in another country but can't get into my macs at my home just a few miles away.  I can reach into my Time Capsule with no problems at my house and my mac mini is using ethernet not wireless.  Now the iMac i get into is old, connected with a very slow satellite connection and I have never had an issue..it just works as long as the internet connection is up....At work I have a GB connection, at home at 100MB ISB connection...but BTMM is intermitant at best....I will go home and stop and start the BTMM services and it will work again for a few days....this is really really frustrating and I hope APPLE WILL tweak Mavericks to be as realiable as Mountain Lion was with BTMM

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Apr 22, 2014 7:16 PM in response to SingaporeJames
    Level 8 (49,654 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 22, 2014 7:16 PM in response to SingaporeJames

    BTMM has been hit and miss for me as well James. Apparently there are many links in the BTMM chain, any one of which can prevent reliable use.

     

    After 100% failures in the first Mavericks releases, the OS X 10.9.2 update has been fairly reliable. I successfully logged in to an office iMac from an airplane at 37,000 feet, but the next day I couldn't from a few miles away.

     

    On the whole it works most of the time though. It would be nice if it worked all the time.

  • by j2zex,

    j2zex j2zex Jul 5, 2014 9:18 AM in response to GFGebhardt
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 5, 2014 9:18 AM in response to GFGebhardt

    As for "all I did was deactivate the BTTM option under iCloud Preference Pane in System Preferences and then reactivated it. Then, voilà! It worked!" -- I just did the same thing for both of my computers, and not it is working again.  Like magic.

  • by abrandt1,

    abrandt1 abrandt1 Mar 22, 2015 4:01 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Mar 22, 2015 4:01 PM in response to John Galt

    Just thought I would respond to this thread even if it is in the wrong spot.  I had to go into my Motorola SBG6580 GUI.  Advanced -> Port Filtering.  Then had to apply these values/settings:

     

    Start Port: 49152

    End Port: 65535

    Protocol: UDP

    Enabled: <checked>

     

    Apply. 

     

    Tested the connection from an external network connection and Back to My Mac found my Mac, and I successfully connected. 

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