"Remote Disc" & DVD or CD Sharing?
I was trying to help another user with an issue with the Snow Leopard Remote Install utility & stumbled on a related issue when trying to use the "DVD or CD Sharing" option in System Preferences > Sharing.
Basically, the issue is it doesn't work, or at least not as the documentation says it should. For example, http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/Snow_Leopard_InstallationInstructions.pdf says on page 3 that one should see on the remote Mac a Remote Disc under Devices in Finder window sidebars. The Snow Leopard help topic "Using another computer’s DVD or CD drive" says the same thing.
However, no matter what I do, no "Remote Disc" (or anything like the DVD's title) shows up in Finder's Devices or any other sidebar category. My software is up to date, the sidebar prefs are set to show everything possible, etc. I've tried wired & wireless connections between my iMacs & MacBook, including a direct Ethernet connection between two of them. No joy with any of them. For the record, File Sharing, Remote Management, etc. all work fine, so this doesn't seem to be a network issue. Plus, if I put a commercial DVD movie in say the iMac & launch DVD Player on the MacBook, I can play the movie by going to the File > Open DVD Media menu item, which shows the DVD in the Open dialog if I navigate to the iMac in the Shared section of the open window, so in this sense ony, DVD sharing does work.l
I found something related here, but it discusses a Firewall issue that I do not have: for me the "DVD or CD Sharing" option in System Preferences > Sharing is marked green & Firewall on or off has no effect. I even tried the suggested defaults write commands in Enable mounting of remote CD/DVDs on any Mac - Mac OS X Hints but that also had no effect.
So I would like to know if anyone does get the "Remote Disc" item in Finder's sidebar Devices category & if so, if it works.
2008 iMacs: 24"/3.06 GHz + 20"/2.66 GHz; White MacBook/2.4 GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Kensington Trackball; Airport Extreme 802.11n; assorted iPods and older Macs