Conor.P.M

Q: Problems using 'Back to my Mac' with Yosemite

At home I have two Macs, an iMac and a MacBook, both running Mavericks. At work I use a MacBook Pro, also running Mavericks, and when I'm out I use a MacBook Air that was running developer preview of Yosemite.

 

My home iMac has now been upgraded to Yosemite. However when at work using my Mavericks MacBook I can no longer use 'Back to my Mac' to screen share back to my iMac, I get "Connection failed to "Conor's iMac", but I can still connect to the MacBook at home running Mavericks. I've also tried connecting to both Macs at home using my Yosemite MacBook Air but I get the same error.

 

I can screen share between all Mac when they are on the local network, but as soon as I'm using iCloud to screen share the only connection I can make is between Macs running Mavericks. It's almost as if 'Back to my Mac' via iCloud is broken in Yosemite.

 

I've tried disabling and reenabling 'Back to my Mac', signing out of iCloud entirely and then logging in again, but nothing I've tried so far will allow me to use iCloud to screen share between two Yosemite Macs.

 

Has anyone else seen this issue, or have any suggestions?

Posted on Oct 21, 2014 12:54 PM

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Q: Problems using 'Back to my Mac' with Yosemite

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  • by El Morche,

    El Morche El Morche Feb 15, 2015 3:05 AM in response to mrbofus
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Wireless
    Feb 15, 2015 3:05 AM in response to mrbofus

    I have tried the BTMMid/VNC method and it works as long as my Mac Mini is not sleeping. Once it goes to sleep it fails.

     

    It is the same with TeamViewer - if it is sleeping it is not possible to wake up the Mac Mini.

  • by El Morche,

    El Morche El Morche Feb 16, 2015 11:51 AM in response to El Morche
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Wireless
    Feb 16, 2015 11:51 AM in response to El Morche

    Today Apple Support suggested that I create a clean installation of Yosemite on a new partition (of 100 Gbytes) on my hard drive and use this to test if Back To My Mac would work in an environment that had not been impacted by the installation of any third party software.

     

    I have done this and initial tests have been positive, however I am going to let my Mac Mini go into a deep sleep overnight and see if BTMM still works in the morning.

     

    If you have the space on your hard drive are still having problems with BTMM it might be worth trying this yourself and let the community know the results.

     

    I'll post an update tomorrow.

  • by RaceTripper,

    RaceTripper RaceTripper Feb 16, 2015 2:02 PM in response to El Morche
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 16, 2015 2:02 PM in response to El Morche

    El Morche wrote:

     

    Today Apple Support suggested that I create a clean installation of Yosemite on a new partition (of 100 Gbytes) on my hard drive and use this to test if Back To My Mac would work in an environment that had not been impacted by the installation of any third party software.

     

    I have done this and initial tests have been positive, however I am going to let my Mac Mini go into a deep sleep overnight and see if BTMM still works in the morning.

     

    If you have the space on your hard drive are still having problems with BTMM it might be worth trying this yourself and let the community know the results.

     

    I'll post an update tomorrow.

     

     

    It's all meaningless unless you test connecting from outside your local network. I can connect all day if both host and client are on the same local network. Connecting from remote networks is what is truly broken, but that is how I – as well as others – need it to work.

  • by El Morche,

    El Morche El Morche Feb 16, 2015 2:11 PM in response to RaceTripper
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Wireless
    Feb 16, 2015 2:11 PM in response to RaceTripper

    RaceTripper wrote:

     

    It's all meaningless unless you test connecting from outside your local network. I can connect all day if both host and client are on the same local network. Connecting from remote networks is what is truly broken, but that is how I – as well as others – need it to work.

    I would have thought that it goes without saying that any testing of Back To My Mac is done through a remote connection.

     

    Back To My Mac is meaningless on a local area network. You do not need Back To My Mac to share files/screens locally.

  • by RaceTripper,

    RaceTripper RaceTripper Feb 16, 2015 2:29 PM in response to El Morche
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 16, 2015 2:29 PM in response to El Morche

    El Morche wrote:

     

    RaceTripper wrote:

     

    It's all meaningless unless you test connecting from outside your local network. I can connect all day if both host and client are on the same local network. Connecting from remote networks is what is truly broken, but that is how I – as well as others – need it to work.

    I would have thought that it goes without saying that any testing of Back To My Mac is done through a remote connection.

     

    Back To My Mac is meaningless on a local area network. You do not need Back To My Mac to share files/screens locally.

     

    I was just clarifying because there have been people claiming BTMM works when all they were doing was screen sharing between two computers on the same LAN.

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Feb 16, 2015 5:52 PM in response to El Morche
    Level 8 (49,522 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 16, 2015 5:52 PM in response to El Morche

    El Morche wrote:

     

    I would have thought that it goes without saying that any testing of Back To My Mac is done through a remote connection.

     

    It should and you're absolutely correct, but Apple complicates matters by applying the same terminology to what are two completely separate connection protocols.

     

    Local "BTMM" uses Bonjour for discovery, and it has always worked. Starting with Yosemite, discoveryd is used for BTMM over WAN, and for those purposes it's broken. OS X versions prior to Yosemite used something else that's not worth discussing. It worked though.

  • by twayneo1,

    twayneo1 twayneo1 Feb 16, 2015 5:58 PM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 16, 2015 5:58 PM in response to John Galt

    II've been doing my due diligence and using the feedback assistant for beta testers and I've aent apple 7 feedbacks for btmm I'll send another with using your analysis

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Feb 16, 2015 6:28 PM in response to El Morche
    Level 8 (49,522 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 16, 2015 6:28 PM in response to El Morche

    El Morche wrote:

     

    I would have thought that it goes without saying that any testing of Back To My Mac is done through a remote connection.

     

    By the way if you have an Apple AirPort Base Station, or (probably) any other wireless router that is capable of creating a "guest network", you can use that network for troubleshooting, obviating the need to relocate your portable Mac simply for the purposes of connecting to a different wireless network. A Mac connected to a different network than the Mac you're attempting to access will be forced to use discoveryd and not Bonjour.

     

    It's been my experience that the remote Macs might appear for a while in "Shared", after which they disappear some time after entering system sleep, never to appear again. That minimum amount of time is inconclusive but an hour or two is about right.

     

    To duplicate that test connect your portable Mac to the "guest network", make sure it remains connected to that network, let the stationary Mac enter sleep and stay that way for a while, then try to access it. If that works, let it sleep for progressively longer periods of time.

     

    If you can still access it the next day, I'd consider the problem fixed.

     

    Preventing the stationary Mac from ever entering system sleep might work also. I don't consider that an acceptable solution, though others might.

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Feb 16, 2015 6:29 PM in response to twayneo1
    Level 8 (49,522 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 16, 2015 6:29 PM in response to twayneo1

    twayneo1 wrote:

     

    II've been doing my due diligence and using the feedback assistant for beta testers and I've aent apple 7 feedbacks for btmm I'll send another with using your analysis

     

    That's all anyone can do

  • by El Morche,

    El Morche El Morche Feb 17, 2015 2:48 AM in response to John Galt
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Wireless
    Feb 17, 2015 2:48 AM in response to John Galt

    John Galt wrote:

    By the way if you have an Apple AirPort Base Station, or (probably) any other wireless router that is capable of creating a "guest network", you can use that network for troubleshooting, obviating the need to relocate your portable Mac simply for the purposes of connecting to a different wireless network. A Mac connected to a different network than the Mac you're attempting to access will be forced to use discoveryd and not Bonjour.

     

     

    This is exactly how I do my testing. (I have a recent 802.11ac Time Capsule with up to date firmware.)

     

    I left my Mac Mini (connected via ethernet to the TC) and my MacBook (connected via wifi) in sleep mode overnight (at least 8 hours).

     

    This morning I put my wife's MacBook Air on to our Guest Network. The only device to show up in the Finder sidebar under Shared was my Time Capsule to which I was able to make a connection  (which proves to me that I have BTMM set up correctly).

     

    It took over an hour of cycling BTMM off and on on the MBA and restarting and cycling BTMM on both the MM and MB before I got all three devices showing up on the Finder sidebar of the MBA although at one time before that I had been able to make reverse connections (i.e. from the MB to the MBA and from the MM to the MBA) via BTMM.

     

    So not good.

     

    All my Macs are on Yosemite 10.10.2

     

    My contact at Apple Support is off for a couple of days so I will try the same thing tomorrow morning.

     

    Unless there is some change tomorrow then when I speak to him next time I expect him to refer my case to Apple Engineering.

  • by Eric Vaughan,

    Eric Vaughan Eric Vaughan Feb 21, 2015 12:38 PM in response to Conor.P.M
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Feb 21, 2015 12:38 PM in response to Conor.P.M

    It is uncanny that so many months can go by without a real response to this issue. BTMM was a very important of a multi-mac ecosystem. I was astounded to find 10 pages of posts over months with no real resolution. What is happening with Apple support that this is the case?

  • by Last Chance Rand,

    Last Chance Rand Last Chance Rand Feb 24, 2015 1:25 PM in response to Eric Vaughan
    Level 1 (20 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 24, 2015 1:25 PM in response to Eric Vaughan

    BTMM stopped working yesterday with no changes in equipment whatsoever.  I've been working ever since to restore, but it seems like it is simply down.  We have BTMM set up for multiple Macs in multiple locations using multiple Apple ID's, and everyone of them stopped working yesterday -- like an entire outage. Screen sharing and file sharing is normal within each LAN at each location, however.  As a result, virtually all work has stopped for my company.  Apple support unable to help -- everything they ask us to do fails.

  • by Brian S. Campbell,

    Brian S. Campbell Brian S. Campbell Feb 24, 2015 1:27 PM in response to Conor.P.M
    Level 1 (82 points)
    Wireless
    Feb 24, 2015 1:27 PM in response to Conor.P.M

    I realize this has been said here before but make sure you give Apple feedback. They've dropped the ball on this one in a major way and need to be reminded...repeatedly...

     

    https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

  • by vegeta777,

    vegeta777 vegeta777 Feb 25, 2015 1:28 PM in response to Last Chance Rand
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2015 1:28 PM in response to Last Chance Rand

    Found this thread after trying to figure out why BTMM (which I just started using last week) suddenly stopped allowing connections.  I can see the computer and time capsule, but cannot connect (could never connect to the time capsule).  Yosemite is turning out to be almost as impressive as Vista.

  • by vegeta777,

    vegeta777 vegeta777 Feb 27, 2015 12:47 PM in response to vegeta777
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 27, 2015 12:47 PM in response to vegeta777

    Now it's working again. 

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