Back to My Mac stopped working

Question

Back to My Mac stopped working

This is a repeat of another post I started. I mistakenly clicked the "This Solved my Question" link before it was actually solved 😉

Anyway, I'm seeing some odd behavior from BTMM. In the morning/evening I seem to be able to connect to other machines (most of the time). During the day however, connections are sporadic at best and I seem to get kicked off a lot. I'm the family "IT guy" so I remotely manage computers for my wife and I, my parents and my brother and his wife and their business. Here's a quick rundown...

Michigan: MacBook & iMac running OS X 10.9 and ARD 3.7 connected to Time Capsule

Wyoming: Several MacBooks running both 10.9 (ARD 3.7) and 10.8.5 (ARD 3.6.2) connected to Linksys Router

Colorado: MacBook & Mini running both 10.9 (ARD 3.7) and 10.8.5 (ARD 3.6.2) connected to Airport Extreme

I'm trying to admin from my MacBook: 10.9/ARD 3.7. Both from work and from home (Colorado locations)

Anyway, regardless of the combination of OS/ARD/Router (at least as far as I can tell). I'm having a very hard time establishing and maintaining connections with any of these machines and it seems to be worse in the afternoon than in the morning. The error i get is always 'Connection failed to "hostName"'

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 12:50 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 24, 2013 12:52 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

I am experiecing the same issues on 2 Mavericks machines....Not sure what the deal is.

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Answer 2

Oct 24, 2013 12:58 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

I should add that I'm using the method I outlined in this thread to allow ARD to work with dynamic IP addresses. It's worked very well for me under OS X 10.8.5/ARD 3.6.2

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Answer 3

Oct 24, 2013 2:26 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

Ok I fixed my issue. I had to go into my router and make sure that the ports were set. Looks like it needs 5543 TCP, and 5543, 4500 UDP and then it started working for me. Never needed those before.

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Answer 4

Oct 24, 2013 7:25 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

I'm having the same problem using 2 Macs, both updated to Mavericks. They worked fine before the upgrade, now I can't get to either one from the other (i.e., can't get to the home from work, or to the work from home). I really hope that the concept of "user friendliness" precludes the need to configure routers! The point of using a Mac is that this is supposed to just work, not require a computer science degree.

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Answer 5

Oct 24, 2013 7:30 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

Refer to this. Again you have to set up a router if it is not Apple for this to work. That's what fixed my issue.http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4907

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Answer 6

Oct 25, 2013 9:39 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell

Back to My Mac is working again - from both computers!

Oddly, all I did was deactivate the BTTM option under iCloud Preference Pane in System Preferences and then reactivated it. Then, voilà! It worked! When I got to work today, I initially tried to get back to my home Mac and it still didn't work. Then I did the same thing - deactivate and reactivate Back to My Mac - and now it works again on my work Mac. I realize this solution seems rediculously simple, but it worked:-)

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Answer 7

Oct 25, 2013 10:05 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell

That's great. I wish mine was that simple :(

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Answer 8

Oct 25, 2013 10:44 AM in response to GFGebhardt

Yeah, unfortunately that didn't work for me either. I'm going to start messing with my ports, but I have an AirPort Extreme so I would expect it to work already...

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Answer 9

Oct 25, 2013 3:53 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

Having the same problem here. Double checked my ports and they're all open. Never had this issue prior to Mavericks, and I can still manually enter the IP for vnc & afp by "connect to server".

-m

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Answer 10

Oct 26, 2013 7:45 AM in response to Marlon Rubio

I do think the issue is specific to iCloud and Back to My Mac services. In the Terminal if you select "New Remote Connection..." from the Shell menu and select a service, say Secure Shell (ssh), then select a computer, you'll notice the URL is a Back to My Mac (btmm) account url. I'm not able to connect to other services via that URL but, if I just use the IP address, it works as expected.

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Answer 11

Oct 27, 2013 10:35 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell

FYI, it seems some people are having luck by disabling their firewall (bad solution, i know) but it indicates a possible bug in the firewall itself, rather than BTMM...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5472057?answerId=23496895022#23496895022

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Answer 12

Oct 31, 2013 1:17 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell

I also used to use "Back to my Mac" all the time, it always worked with the previous OS X. Since upgrading both machines to Mavericks it stopped worked (almost). I quite often get "Connection failed", only managed to connect twice in these past three days (of about 100 attempts).

Ps.: Someone mentioned "BTTM option under iCloud Preference Pane in System Preferences", but I can't seem to find this?? (so couldn't even try this suggestion)

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Answer 13

Nov 6, 2013 7:59 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

So it does seem related to firewall being on. Despite the fact that Screen Sharing is already setup to allow incoming connections, it's definitely blocking BTMM. I turned off my firewall, then was able to connect using BTMM. Once connected from the remote computer, I turned my firewall back on and was able to continue using screen sharing. I disconnected and tried to reconnect with the firewall on and got the same "unable to connect to [hostname] message. Firewall bug?

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Answer 14

John Galt

Level 10

141,126 points

Nov 6, 2013 10:41 PM in response to Treyberto

Treyberto wrote:

... Firewall bug?

Anything is possible but if the Macs you are attempting to access are behind a router used by people you trust, there is no need to use the OS X firewall. Unless you are using your Mac on a public Wi-Fi network (for example) there is no reason to enable it. Leaving it off will simplify troubleshooting.

I have never used the OS X firewall, and the problem described by Brian S. Campbell still exists.

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Answer 15

Nov 7, 2013 9:10 AM in response to Brian S. Campbell

Looks like what's working for a lot of people (myself included) is to delete the Screensharingd from the list in firewall. Once I did that, I was able to get to my mac without disabling the firewall. Hope this helps.

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