Shared name of Mac keeps changing

mr_bee wrote:

[...] I shall ignore all your future posts to this and any other problem I post. [...]

If that's what you want to do, it's alright by me.

Hello Frank, this seems like a helpful piece of information, I wish I could get the same out of my Macbook's log but I am unable to.

Did you just get those messages out of your system log without any particular setting?

Or was it rather part of your AirportExtreme log?

I have checked both my units to no avail.

It is to say that since I changed my computer name to another one the issue hasn't shown up which is good in a way but it would be nice to understand the mechanism behind this new behavior..

Ah, wait. I just ran across this article about Bonjour Sleep Proxy which seems to detail the problem and give a few different workarounds. The most obvious workaround seems to be disabling unneeded network services, such as 'Wake for Wi-Fi'. Can you try that, Frank, and see if it hits the sweet spot?

As I added in the edit to my post it's the Airport Extreme.

So it appears it is not a conflict of names, in fact (at least in previous OS versions) if there was a name conflict a popup would be displayed telling you the name was already in use and the is was changing the name.

This appears to to IP related and there is no message to the user telling them there is a conflict, the change just happens.

Thus also seems telling (the second line of the console log I included)

but exactly what is triggering it I don;t know.

System log on the Mac. You need to be in an Admin account to see the system log in the Console app.

And yet the screw turns, have a look at

About Wake on Demand and Bonjour Sleep Proxy - Apple ...

So do we all have Airport devices and/or Apple Tvs on our networks?

<edit>

twtwtw jist found that too. Will need to give it a read and see what applies here. thanks

It has been a few hours since the last post and it's morning here in Europe, time for an update I guess.

I can confirm I have not one but two Airport units on my network. (well, one is a TImeCapsule but you got the idea).

Interestingly, I have been using Apple computers since 1982 but didn't know about this “Wake on demand“ feature built into Apple's networking.

Nice service, I have been experimenting with it. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.

As for the networking issue I must sadly confirm that also renaming my computer to “Computernamo“ didn't last long.

This morning at wake up I found a “Computernamo (2)“ instead of the original name. So, not a solution either.

I just noticed however one more thing that might be irrelevant or, perhaps, the clue to the core issue.

As I mentioned yesterday, changing the network name of my computer apparently didn't affect the computer “hostname“. (see screenshot in previous post)

For the sake of testing, I tried to login and logout and to restart and the “hostname“ remained the same. This morning the hostname had eventually updated and the network name had updated consequently as for below screenshot. The two things appear to be linked, and the first conclusion is that hostname and network name for some obscure reason don't like to be the same. Perhaps some of you guys may note the same on your own computers.

Does this trigger any thoughts as to what the reason might be?

I just noticed however one more thing that might be irrelevant or, perhaps, the clue to the core issue.

As I mentioned yesterday, changing the network name of my computer apparently didn't affect the computer “hostname“. (see screenshot in previous post)

Unfortunately, it is irrelevant.

The bash shell prompt, will take your IP address and do a reverse DNS lookup. If the DNS server has a name for your IP address that will be used. In a home setting the router is often the local DNS server, and Macs, the router generally does not have a name for your IP address, so the Mac then returns the System Preferences -> Sharing -> Computer Name as you have entered it.

Since the problem being discussed in this thread is about the Bonjour name advertised name, and not the Sharing Computer Name, what the bash shell says about your computer name does not apply.

Gran Maestro

Haven't forgotten this but I am in the middle of running some tests on one of my machines that makes it impossible for me to reboot it so I've put this problem on the back burner for now.

I see Bob has answered your question concerning the data you saw so I guess for now there isn;t much more for me to add. I was hoping for more input from the others who posted with this problem just so we could confirm what we are seeing. But I suppose everyone had different reasons for posting here about the problem.

You might want to start a new thread for yourself concerning this. You can reference back to this one and/or summarize what is here. We'll try to keep the new thread technical.😉

regards

Hello Frank, thanks for your fee back and here is another update.

I finally found a simple fix that actually works and has lasted for the last few days.

Turning off “Wake for network access“ in the “energy saving“ preferences panel of my MacBook Pro did the trick.

My patience towards this Bonjour bug reached the tipping point two days ago while using the Remote.app on the iphone I tried to browse my iTunes music library to play some music.

I found 4 instances of the same library available. To much for me to bear.

In the meanwhile I had read the articles linked to by you and twtwtw regarding the Bonjour Sleep Proxy which had made me understand how and why this service was available. Thank you for that.

As I said, turning off the Sleep Proxy as made me an happy camper again. No more ghost-names on my network.

Not much of a fix actually but a good enough solution until Apple does it's homework.

It would be interesting to hear from the other fellows reading this thread if it works for them as well.

Cheers

Pieter

Turning off the Bonjour Sleep Proxy does the trick for me.

Thank you

P

I have not had this issue for several years now, & it occurs to me that it might be because I have set up DHCP reservations, first in my older (third or forth generation 'pancake' shaped) Airport Extreme Base Station & now in the current model 'tall boy' Time Capsule that recently replaced it, for some of my network-connected devices, including three Macs & an Apple TV 3.

For each of these I used the MAC address reservation method, not the DHCP Client one, & where applicable set up a separate reservation both for the Ethernet & WiFi MAC address of the device. (For those that don't know, the Media Access Control address is the unique identifier of a network interface, usually specified as six groups of two hexadecimal numbers separated by dashes or colons, like 01:23:45:67:89:ab. Devices with both Ethernet & WiFi network interfaces will have a different one for each interface, so if you sometimes use both & you are going to try this, be sure to make reservations for each of them.)

The MAC addresses can be found in various places. Usually, they are listed on a label on the device or on the box it came in. For Macs, they can be found in the Network item in System Information (or System Profiler on older OS X versions). For an Apple TV 3 they can be found in Settings > General > About or Settings > General > Network.

To set up the reservations with the current version of Airport Utility, click on your Time Capsule, AEBS, or whatever you use, then on the "Edit" button in the popup. Select the "Network" tab & in the DHCP Reservations section, click on the plus icon. In the sheet that drops down, enter a short description of the interface (like "MacBook WiFi"), if necessary change the "Reserve Address By:" item to "MAC Address" & enter the appropriate MAC address in the box below that. Finally, enter a unique iPv4 address in the last box & click "Save." IMPORTANT: you must use a unique IPv4 address for each reservation & it must be in the allowed range.

Repeat this for each interface, then click the "Update" button, which will restart the AEBS or Time Capsule & force it to use the specified IP address for each interface every time it is connected to the network.

I hope a few of you will try this & see if it makes any difference. Like I said, I have not seen this issue for years but I can't say for certain that is because of the reservations. Even if it doesn't help, as long as you are careful about entering the correct MAC & unique IP addresses, it will have no effect other than to make sure each device gets a stable, never changing IP address.

My situation has resolved itself. No more renaming after a sleep/wake scenario. I said earlier I was going to look at Back to my Mac and other services that use the Bonjour Sleep Proxy, but I never got there. The the only change in my environment was updating Macs to OS X 10.10.1.

I have one laptop still running Mavericks which has never presented this problem, and neither did my other Macs prior to Yosemite. My problem was resolved by the last .1 update.

(That Yosemite update also fixed another annoying issue I had where an Apple Remote Desktop update was stuck in Software Update/App Store. So I got two annoying things fixed by one update.)

I'll stress here that the only factor that changed was OS X. All my Apple network hardware is the same, running the same versions of their respective software.

Glad to hear that 10.10.1 seemed to fix the problem for you. Just to be clear you do have Wake for Network access turned on on your machines, correct?

I currently have it off and have not had the problem since. As I have upgraded to 10.10.1 I'll have to turn it back on and see what happens.

regards