Home Sharing doesn't work on my iMac (2013)

Question

godbout Author

Level 1

8 points

Home Sharing doesn't work on my iMac (2013)

Hi,

I have an iMac 2013, all my music and movies are on it.

Home Sharing is enabled.

I have the iMac, an iPhone, an iPad and an Apple TV all on the same network, sponsored by a Time Capsule.

None of the 3 devices can connect to the iMac library. The Apple TV doesn't see it. When I add the library in the Remote app of the iPhone and iPad, I have to enter the code in iTunes but then after the app is "looking for the library" without finding it.

The main reason was for me to load my movies from the Apple TV in my living room, but it doesn't work as it can see the Home Sharing. I can though AirPlay the iMac on the Apple TV (so definitely on the same network).

Any idea? I've done the whole bunch of crap from Apple, nothing works. Rebooted like 20 times each.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Oct 15, 2013 5:43 AM

Reply

Answer 1

godbout Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 15, 2013 8:29 PM in response to godbout

I've tried at work with my work's macbook air, works like a charm with the Remote app on iPhone and iPad. My library is quickly detected and accessible. So it seems the issue is coming from my iMac?

Reply

Answer 2

godbout Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 16, 2013 12:54 AM in response to godbout

I brought my macbook air at home, everything worked perfectly: iPhone, iPad and Apple TV can connect. So basically I guessed that the issue was coming from the iMac, something preventing it to be discovered. I've checked the bonjour broadcasting and oh, surprise, the iMac wasn't broadcasting... Weird because it's a setup from a Time Machine, the environment I am running currently on the macbook air.

Anyway, if this can help someone else:

I've ran:

ps aux | grep mDNS

and saw that for the iMac the daemon was launched with the argument -NoMulticastAdvertisements.

I've setup the daemon to run back as normal and restarted the computer:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder ProgramArguments -array /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder -launchd

After the reboot, everything works flawlessly (it has never worked before for the 6 months I had the Apple TV).

Also interesting discovery and I think it's new because I don't remember being able to do that before, but some of my devices are on the separate 5Ghz network, some are on the 2.4Ghz and they can still all communicate flawlessly. I can use AirPlay on the Export Express that is on the 2.4 from the iMac that is on the 5Ghz, and I can access the iMac library from whatever band. Pretty nice!

Reply