I have an Ethernet LAN with a switch for 2 Macs and a printer and would share stuff between the 2

Eventually I had Apple Support on the phone. The first adviser had my screen on his computer. We had a look around all the settings and he agreed: there were no mistakes. He made me restart the MBA in Recuperation Mode to no avail. He had no solution so he passed the hot potatoe to a higher level engineer. The guy had the same diagnostic until he noticed that there was a moon in the menu bar, hence the MBA was in Do Not Disturb mode. I hardly knew this feature existed. I had never opened the Notification page anyway. The option that was ticked was When mirroring to TVs and projectors. Once unticked I suddenly had access to the shared folder and its content on the Mini.

OK, but wait a minute: disabling the Do Not Disturb mode on the MBA enables it to access the shared folder on the Mini! It makes no sense!

And wait another minute: the Mini still can't access the shared folder on the MBA even though it's not in Do Not Disturb mode. Even though this folder appears in the Network folder, when I double click on it I have a message that says this folder doesn't exist! It's just nuts.

And it's not finished: I deshared the shared folder on the MBA and created a new one. Yet on the Mini it was the old one that was still displayed. After some tweaking the new one appeared but still impossible to open.

At least we progressed half way: the MBA can access the Mini.

Nick

I enabled WiFi on both Macs and the result was the same: access denied. So, contrary to what I was inclined to suppose, the switch is not the culprit.

Yet I find odd that in the Finder, in the Network window, not only the other Mac is listed with the Kind: "Mac", but the switch too with the Kind: "PC". At one point in the MacBook it was listed too as a PC.

As a result I think I might just give up. Being in a hurry I shared stuff with a USB key. Considering the amount of time I lost on this attempt I think I would be better off continuing doing so than trying to make this "sharing" gimmick work.

Maybe I should restart both Macs. It would be like in the old times of Windows…

Nick

Actually I have a suspicion. There are precedents for it:

1. When I bought the Mini I connected it to a 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor via an HDMI cable but I could not get a higher resolution than 1080. After trying many tricks I was informed that Mac OS didn't have the driver for a better resolution than 1080 via HDMI. "Why so?" I asked. "This is the way it is. Period. The only possible way is via DisplayPort." So I had to buy a miniDP cable and it worked fine.
2. When I bought the M1 MBA I bought also a Thunderbolt Dock that includes a DP port. I connected everything and the screen remained black. I tried many things: I changed cables, I tweaked the settings, to no avail. Then I tried with the USB-C adapter that includes a DP port and I had an image. So I had to ask the question. Answer: "This version of Big Sur is not able to send images to a display via Thunderbolt." What!? Apple has for years been promoting TB for display connection, sells MBs with only 2 TB ports, and omitted to make the OS able to use them fully? After upgrading Big Sur I eventually had an image.

Is it yet another shortcoming of Mac OS?

Since there is no way out than via TB do I have to upgrade Mac OS or forget about creating a network. Yet I couldn't get a connection via WiFi either.

Nick

John Galt wrote:

Your configuration should work.

Thanks for sharing your feelings. But, well… it doesn't.

The question is not whether it should work but how it's possible to make it work.

Nick