Apple TV 3 wakes Mac Mini running iTunes with home sharing every 10 mins or less!

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Level 1

15 points

Apple TV 3 wakes Mac Mini running iTunes with home sharing every 10 mins or less!

Hi

I have an Apple TV 3 with the latest firmware connected to my network via ethernet. I have multiple time capsules and airport extremes forming a wired and wireless network. I have a Mac Mini running 10.10.2 for the sole purpose of running iTunes (12.1.050) and home sharing from a collection housed on a thunderbolt Drobo 5D. The Mac Mini does nothing else and runs no other software beyond iTunes, Drobo software and OS X.

The Mac Mini is set to turn off display after 5 mins and sleep at 10mins. Typically it runs headless without a monitor connection. The Mac Mini is not running a firewall nor is it encrypted. Wake for Network Access is set to ON.

This has worked well for wired streaming for sometime with the Mac Mini and Drobo sleeping most the time and spinning up only when the Apple TV 3 is started up. The Apple TV 3 is always in standby otherwise.

Starting yesterday I repeated noted that the Mac Mini was on and the Drobo was spinning at full speed. The Apple TV 3 was not in use and its light was off. Looking at the logs its clear that the Mac Mini is being woken by the Apple TV (Wake for GIGE started by Apple TV 3s mac address and IP address). This happens every 10mins and therefore as the Mac Mini starts to sleep its immediately woken up for 10mins, idles, tries to sleep, wakes up due to network access from the Apple TV 3. This keeps on cycling.

If I force a sleep then the Mac Mini wakes within several minutes and begins the above cycle. If I close iTunes it sleeps happily without being woken.

I cannot figure out what has changed but it is clear that the Apple TV 3 is constantly waking the Mac Mini via home sharing/bonjour. I am aware that it is necessary for checks and wakes to refresh the sharing connections etc as per Apple KB articles but every 10mins is excessive and this behaviour is new.

I have seen old postings suggesting moving from Wired to Wireless Apple TV connections can resolve this but I need the wired connection for performance reasons.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix or at least amend this behaviour whilst preserving function and letting my devices sleep?

Thanks

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Mar 14, 2015 2:08 AM

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Answer 1

WilkyF18

Level 1

4 points

Apr 25, 2015 7:40 PM in response to LBJ_UK

LBJ,

I have a VERY similar problem: iTunes - Excessive Wake-ups (PWRB GLAN)

I thought it was iTunes waking my system because all my media is on a server (a homebuilt system running Windows 7, but kind of like your Drobo). I didn't think it was the AppleTV, but I will unplug the AppleTV tonight and see if it still happens.

Question: if you open up CONSOLE and in your 'system.log' search for "wake reason" what reasons do you get? I get "Wake reason: PWRB GLAN (User)" every 10-15 minutes (other than the normal "RTC (Alarm)" and "XHC" for when I wake it up myself).

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Answer 2

WilkyF18

Level 1

4 points

Apr 26, 2015 9:39 AM in response to LBJ_UK

LBJ,

You are right! It is the AppleTV causing these wake ups, not iTunes as I had suspected. I unplugged my AppleTV 3 last night and the "PWRB GLAN" wakeup stopped.

However, I have had the AppleTV for over a year, and this only started happening when I moved my media to my server. So there is something going on with the AppleTV wanting to continuously wake up its host computer when that host computer's media is saved on a separate "server" (Win7 Server in my case, Drobo in your case).

My host computer is a Late 2013 iMac, I see yours is a Mac Mini. We are both running 10.10.2. Have you upgraded to 10.10.3 yet? What is your firmware on the AppleTV?

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