Can't wake Lion over wifi (or ethernet) using iPad and home sharing.

It didn't work, I'll plug my iMac to ethernet, that way it worked.

I don't know why Wake over Wi-Fi doesn't work on iMac.

Hello!!!

2 days ago I was trying to compare the settings of my MacBook Pro (which wakes on lan without any issue) with the settings of my iMac (which disconnects from the network after something like 6 hours of sleep).

I was thinking it should be something related about how the Mac handle the sleep and how it reacts during the sleep mode. In the preferences, I've noticed that my MacBook Pro uses hibernate mode 3, my iMac uses hibernate mode 0.

So, I changed the hibernate mode to 3 on my iMac. And over 12 hours of sleep I was able to wake it up without any issue. At the same time, I changed the hibernate mode on my MacBook Pro to 0. Guess what? It reacts like the iMac now, it disconnects from the network after 6 hours of sleep.

To change your hibernate mode type in terminal:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

If you want more information about hibernate modes, here's the link

http://www.macworld.com/article/1053471/sleepmode.html

I'll inform you if the problem comes back.

This has solved my problem. My office iMac is now visible on the network all the time, and can be woken up by my macbook and iPad. I am not sure what "networkoversleep" really means though. Does it give "network access" priority over "sleep"? I hope this does not mean the iMac cannot go to sleep.

Tony T1 wrote:

In Terminal:

sudo pmset networkoversleep 1

Then

pmset -g

to confirm that it was set

You can also do:

cat /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

to see that PrioritizeNetworkReachabilityOverSleep was changed in the .plist file.

Networkoversleep didn't work in my case and for many people...

Just tried this, did not work for me.

I have found a reliable way to reproduce the problem quickly for troubleshooting, and have relayed to Apple support.

My MacMini is set to auto login, and starts iTunes on login.

1. Boot up Mac, start iTunes

2. Switch on Apple TV

3. Stream a movie from Apple TV for a minute or so

-- so far, so good --

4. Stop playing movie, Sleep AppleTV (General menu > Sleep)

5. Sleep Mac (Apple icon -> Sleep)

Wait for the Mac to sleep, the white light on front pulses on and off

Don't touch the mac from this point onward

-- wait a few minutes --

6. Wake AppleTV

7. Hold breath in anticipation!

8. Select Computers ...... it shows up and I can play a movie, as it should.

* note - the mac wakes, but the monitor attached to the Mac stays blank *

-- still ok up to this point --

9. Stop movie playing, Sleep Apple TV

11. Wait 10 minutes - the Mac decides to go to sleep, irrispective of the Sleep settings (mine is set to 20 minutes by the way, and the display sleep is set to 5 minutes.)

Now,

12. Wake AppleTV

13. Select Computers

Problem: The Mac iTunes library shows up, but on attempting to select 'Movies' you get a spinning wheel on the TV screen for about 2 monutes before it gives up.

The Mac does not wake up!

14. Hit the spacebar on the MacMini ... it wakes, everything springs back into life.

Go back to step 3, it all happens the same way.

Conclusions?

After running network sniffers, and dns-sd commands (there is also a nice iPhone app called 'Bonjour Discovery' that shows the status of home_sharing - I see that the sleep_proxy broadcasts stop being sent from the Mac once it has put itself to sleep.

If the Mac sleeps because of no user activity (the first time) then it will wake again, however if the Mac wakes into 'dark mode' and then sleeps, then it falls off the network.

I found that if I set the boot options for 'darkwake=0' and repeat the above test, then at step 8 above the monitor springs into life, and the Mac now works as it should do - i.e. it does not disappear off the network and it continues to wake / sleep - basically work properly.

I found that if I set my sleep settings too high - above 50 minutes, then things start going wrong again, and the mac stops waking. 15 minutes was the optimum for me, but not less than 10 or it does not work.

This has worked for me for 5 days so far, I did have one hic-cup, and found there to be a problem with iTunes - another long story, but switching off iTunes Match, De-authorising the computer, and signing out of iTunes, then signing back in, and switching back on did the trick.

The main thing I don't like about this solution, is that the Mac wakes up once an hour through the night, drives spin up, screen comes on - it associates with the network, then dozes off again after 15 minutes.

So although I have a solution, I'm not happy with the long term effects of spinning up the drives once an hour - all through the night 24/7.

I ended up just setting the Mac to stay on all the time, gave up on the wake on network option, and set it to wake at 8am, and sleep at 1am .... this will have to do until Apple sort this annoying problem out.

I have a MacMini 2012, OSX10.8.2, iTunes 11.0.1 (latest at this point in time.)

2012 Time Capsule, and several Apple TV-3 - all connected over WiFI on 5GHz network band. Router is a BT Infinity modem (I did away with the BT Home Hub and plugged the Time Capsule directly into the modem.)

In my testing I also took a 2008 MacBookPro and wiped it and updated to Mountain Lion 10.8.2 - it shoed exactly the same faults - I also factory reset the Time Capsule and Apple TV, and signed them all back in, and switched on Home Sharing and iTunes Match.

One annoyance was that the MBP2008 kept bugging me to allow the firewall every time I started iTunes. I wiped the machine again and reinstalled - I discovered that the last update corrupts iTunes 😟 - codesign -v iTunes.app reports it is corrupt, and I had to delete iTunes manually, re-download from Apple and it worked - a bit disappointing really.

Finally, I have a new 2012 MacBookPro Retina - same issues.

I've tried all the great suggestions in this thread, and found the above (darkwake=0) and Sleep=15 to be the best I could get, but not good enough for me.

If you got to the end of my post, I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else gets the same results, that is if your patience has not given out with rather annoying issue.

And for what it's worth, Snow Leopard works fine, I reinstalled this on the MBP2008, it only goes bad from Lion (in my tests.)

One final point to add,

During troubleshooting, I noticed a lot of errors in system logs on the MacMini related to lsbox, and errors relating to various things about sleeping and ethernet.

These crept in since upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion.

I cured these by booting the MacMini into 'Safe Mode', then boot normally - since then no more errors relating to sleep.

It seems that the firmware v7.6.3 of AirPort Extreme Base Station released yesterday has fixed the wake-up problem as I tested my iPad to connected to Home Sharing library on my iMac with OS 10.8.2 withing 5 seconds this monring. I will test more and report here.

Not for me, unfortunatly.....back to v7.6.0.

Further tests showed it did not fix the problem. The worse is that any attempt to wake up shared library causes crash of iTunes when locally loggin to iMac (endless spinning wheel). 😟 It seems I would give up on Apple to fix this problem forever.

The endless spinning wheel is amazing. It spins everwhere and I have no control over the computer at all.

With AirPort Utility 6.2, it's now possible to downgrade firmware (previously, it was necessary to use v5.6)

From arstechnica:

With the latest version of the Airport Utility (6.2, also released last week) this is done by clicking on the AEBS, then on "edit," and then hovering the mouse pointer over the version number while holding the option key. This turns the version number into a drop-down menu with access to several older firmware versions. Be careful, though: once you click on a firmware version, the process starts, and there are no opportunities to stop it.

I was having trouble when I went back to 7.6.0, so I tried clearing my caches (with SafeBoot, and also a 3rd party app), and it cleared up my issue. I then re-installed 7.6.3, did a SafeBoot and cache cleaning again, and for the past 6 hours, no issue. (I don't expect this to hold up for long, but we'll see 🙂)

...didn't hold (no suprise), back to 7.6.0 for me.

I don't think the issue is caused by Airport Extreme, once it occurs since I have other router on the setup, connecter by wireless or by ethernet. I notice the problem everytime I try to connect the iTunes library from iPad, iPhone and Apple TV.

In spite of it all, I would like to try downgrading the airport Extreme firmware to 7.6.0, but using the Tony T1 method, it shows only 7.6.3 and 7.6.1, and I don't find the 7.6.0 firmware to download. Can anybody help me with a link?

7.6.0 is not available for d/l. It's possible that you have it saved in Time Machine.

Open TM and navigate (in your home directory) to: Library/Application Support/Apple/AirPort/Firmware/114/