back to my mac iCloud server not responding

Hi Tomaz,

The easiest thing to fix is the ping6 command - omit the < and > characters from it and be sure to type ping6 without a space between ping and 6.

In other words,

ping6 iMac-24-inch-de-Tomaz-Tacla.269143466.members.btmm.icloud.com

should work for you. If it does not, change the name of your iMac to something shorter, with no spaces. Troubleshooting will be easier that way.

Your system configuration is very similar to the ones I have been using, in that they are all Macs running Mavericks and your base stations are also all all Apple equipment. Your results are also very similar. The results of dns-sd -B _rfb | grep icloud will always show the Macs advertising screen sharing services, regardless of whether I am able to successfully connect to it or not. Locally, it works fine exactly as you said.

I would not bother reinstalling Mavericks as I have no reason to expect this issue is related to a potentially corrupt or incomplete installation. Something does appear to be different in Mavericks though, in that BTMM in Mountain Lion was very reliable whereas with Mavericks it appears to be less reliable. For example, yesterday I was able to connect to a remote Mac without any difficulty, but today I am not able to connect at all. Obviously nothing about my system configuration has changed from then to now. The only thing that has changed is the passage of time, and Internet conditions over which none of us has any control.

There may be two separate issues here, for which I have two questions and one suggestion:

1. Are your Macs configured to sleep?

   The reason for asking is that is will be necessary to have a remote access request wake the sleeping Mac. Normally a Mac registers itself with the AirPort Base Station's Sleep Proxy Service. When it goes to sleep either by selecting Sleep from the Apple menu, or according to the settings in Energy Saver, that service allows your Time Capsule to act as a "proxy" for the Mac, advertising its presence to the network. When you attempt to connect to the Mac, the Time Capsule sends a "magic packet" to the Mac in order to wake it. If any of that does not occur, the connection request will time out and fail.

2. How are your Macs connected to the Time Capsule - wired Ethernet, wirelessly, or both?

   The reason for asking is that the "magic packet" may or may not be carried by Ethernet when the wake request originates outside the LAN. Try disconnecting Ethernet, leaving only Wi-Fi for the Mac to communicate.

Since your Time Capsule is new, I suggest you contact AppleCare and take advantage of their 90 days of free telephone support. Explain your situation, which given your level of experience will most likely be elevated to someone with direct access to Engineering. They may have you run some tests on your Mac that will help either them or you resolve the problem, and perhaps help the rest of us determine what's wrong. Expect such troubleshooting to take several days, at least.

I have experienced similar issues. In some cases toggling Back to My Mac off and then on again in the iCloud System Preferences panel seems to work fo a while, but not always.

But using the Finder's Go to Server… command has worked every time for me so far.

The string for a remote Screen Sharing connection is:

vnc://[IP address of remote router or its host name]:[local IP address of remote computer]

The string for a remote File Sharing connection is:

afp://[IP address of remote router or its host name]:[local IP address of remote computer]

I believe this is a bug in Mavericks.

Hi John and James,

First of all thanks for the detailed info and responding to my problem. As per your suggestion I have changed the computer names for something simpler and have checked all the settings for Sleep on Demand, everything is as it's supposed to be. Now that I have corrected the syntax for the command, all my computers and routers seem to be correctly connected to BTMM, and responding to the pings. I have also checked directly with the IP ADDRESSES are these the expected results?

iMac24TT:~ tomaztacla$ ping 6 201.83.2.58.269143466.members.btmm.icloud.com

usage: ping [-AaDdfnoQqRrv] [-b boundif] [-c count] [-G sweepmaxsize] [-g sweepminsize]

[-h sweepincrsize] [-i wait] [-l preload] [-M mask | time] [-m ttl]

[-p pattern] [-S src_addr] [-s packetsize] [-t timeout]

[-W waittime] [-z tos] host

ping [-AaDdfLnoQqRrv] [-c count] [-I iface] [-i wait] [-l preload]

[-M mask | time] [-m ttl] [-p pattern] [-S src_addr]

[-s packetsize] [-T ttl] [-t timeout] [-W waittime]

[-z tos] mcast-group

iMac24TT:~ tomaztacla$ ping 6 iMac27TT.269143466.members.btmm.icloud.com

usage: ping [-AaDdfnoQqRrv] [-b boundif] [-c count] [-G sweepmaxsize] [-g sweepminsize]

[-h sweepincrsize] [-i wait] [-l preload] [-M mask | time] [-m ttl]

[-p pattern] [-S src_addr] [-s packetsize] [-t timeout]

[-W waittime] [-z tos] host

ping [-AaDdfLnoQqRrv] [-c count] [-I iface] [-i wait] [-l preload]

[-M mask | time] [-m ttl] [-p pattern] [-S src_addr]

[-s packetsize] [-T ttl] [-t timeout] [-W waittime]

[-z tos] mcast-group

I wil definately try to use Apple's 90 day support, because I do not think it should be that difficult, and it seems to me that we cannot be the only ones having these issues. I've been trying to read in different blogs and forums with no such luck. Anyways, I will keep you guys posted. Unfortunately it will take me a few days to contact them, since i do have to work and cannot spend my whole day hanging on the phone with Apple.

James, I will also try your syntax and i assume it's supposed to be used on Terminal.

Thanks again, and I hope I will get back to you soon with more news.

Tomaz

"James, I will also try your syntax and i assume it's supposed to be used on Terminal."

No, you don't need to use the Terminal application.

Finder>Go menu>Connect to Server…

Once you have done this you can save the strings so you don't have to enter them again the next time.

Hi John Galt,

Thanks for your valuable information. I have been having similar difficulties (see my previous post). When I perform the "dns-sd -B _rfb | grep icloud" I see only my iMac (for which BTMM obviously works), but not my Mac Mini (for which BTMM obviously does not work). I have checked that Screen Sharing in the Sharing preference pane is enabled (I have also turned it off and back on, but no difference). So is there something I can do to get BTMM to recognize Screen Sharing on my Mac Mini, and do I just wait until Apple hopefully fixes this in a future update to Mavericks?

By the way, here is what I see when I do a "dns-sd _b _rfb" (without the grep):

David-Wagoners-Mac-Mini:~ wagoner$ dns-sd -B _rfb

Browsing for _rfb._tcp

DATE: ---Wed 06 Nov 2013---

8:40:05.878 ...STARTING...

Timestamp A/R Flags if Domain Service Type Instance Name

8:40:05.879 Add 3 0 123072138.members.btmm.icloud.com. _rfb._tcp. David-Wagoners-Intel-iMac

8:40:05.879 Add 3 4 local. _rfb._tcp. David-Wagoners-Mac-Mini

8:40:05.879 Add 3 5 local. _rfb._tcp. David-Wagoners-Mac-Mini

8:40:05.879 Add 3 4 local. _rfb._tcp. David-Wagoners-Intel-iMac

8:40:05.879 Add 2 5 local. _rfb._tcp. David-Wagoners-Intel-iMac

^C

So the _rfb._tcp. service type is seen locally for my Mac Mini, but not by BTMM, whereas it is seen both locally and by BTMM for my iMac. Also, do you where I can find the meaning of the "Flags" values (in particular why a "2" shows up for the Intel iMac and it's "3" everywhere else)?

Also when I try the ping6 to my Intel iMac (or my Mac Mini), ping6 returns all lower case letters for my Mac-name along with a "No route to host" message. Thanks again for your valuable insights and expertise.

Hi Tom,

Don't put a space between ping and 6.

The command is

ping6

No space.

In the same boat on my home Imac since upgrading last night.

Had no issues on a couple of macbooks on day 1. Used those macbooks to remote in to the imac on a daily basis until I upgaded it to Mavericks last night.

Since then, BTMM reporting "icloud server not responding". Trying the terminal items referenced above in my home imac, I do not see it reporting at being a part of btmm...which makes perfect sense, I can't see it from my laptops.

Other icloud services - files, calendars, mail, etc all working.

Hi Guys,

I think i've found the solution. It was either by chance, mistake or pure luck!!!!!

Here is the solution: On my TC (4th Gen) at the Office, on the "Internet Options" tab I have switched the "Configure IPv6" to Link-local only from a previous choice of Automatic.

That does not make sense at all since at the other end my TC (5th Gen) is configured as "Automatic" and automatic should mean it will choose automatically for you the proper way to comunicate.

Now every thing is working flawlessly!

At least for now. As for the other settings I have already followed John's instructions. Also I have changed my comuter's names to shorter ones without spaces as John suggested. Thanks BTW!

I will follow up in case something changes. Thanks for your help, John!

That didn't do it for me - my airports were already set up as local link. I've also got a macbook running 10.9 on my network that's working, but an imac recently upgrade to 10.9 that is producing the "icloud server not responding" message.

I don't know which step worked for me but I finally got it working today.

I have a 3TB time capsule connected to my cable modem. It feeds ethernet to my computer room where I have an airport extreme. My iMac which wasn't working is connected to that.

I found that I was unable to resolve ipv6 addresses from my iMac, tried a bunch of things with no luck. Out of desparation, i disabled the icloud accounts I had set up on both routers (they were accessible externally.) I also removed the DNS servers I had referenced on my airport extreme (they were set to go to OpenDNS.)

Once both routers rebooted I was able to finally hit my work machine again.

Wow. I Tried everything mentioned in every post from this thread. Took me 2 hours and ... nothing. The annoying error message keeps popping up. Everything worked just fine under Mountain Lion.

I checked for an ipv6 address: i have none. Could that have something to do with it? My provider doesn't support them yet. I tried entering google's Public DNS servers in my routers DNS settings on top of my provider's settings (provided by obligatory DHCP), but that just killed my internet connection.

Some specs:

Imac 27" - 2013. New AC TimeCapsule 2 tb (bridge), older (V2?) Timecapsule (router). Upgraded to Mavericks 2 weeks ago.

Indeed! It appears that 10.9 Mavericks has broke Back to My Mac for me. I triede to turn on-off back to my mac in system pref. and to activate Back to my Mac in the airport utility BUT sitl not working!

Please help!

Hi John and James,

It seems that the apparent fix i've worked was temporary. BTMM is no longe working! 😢 I will try to contact Apple support today if not tomorrow to see if they come up with a solution! I have the feeling that it has something to do with Mavericks (of course), but also with TC configurations. Still the weirdest thing is that pinging and on terminal all my devices are responding!

I'll keep in touch!

Hi James,

That did not work as well! 😟

James A. Weston wrote:

I have experienced similar issues. In some cases toggling Back to My Mac off and then on again in the iCloud System Preferences panel seems to work fo a while, but not always.

But using the Finder's Go to Server… command has worked every time for me so far.

The string for a remote Screen Sharing connection is:

vnc://[IP address of remote router or its host name]:[local IP address of remote computer]

The string for a remote File Sharing connection is:

afp://[IP address of remote router or its host name]:[local IP address of remote computer]

I believe this is a bug in Mavericks.

I'll keep in touch.

None of the suggestions worked for me. No hardware changes, the ONLY change was upgrading to Mavericks at both ends.

I guess I'll just sit tight and wait for Apple to resolve this. Bummer.

Good luck to the rest of you.

B