[WelMac] Personal file sharing

[David Empson]

At 9:17 AM +1200 24/3/2006, John Crook wrote:
>I use personal file sharing regularly on my network to transfer 
>information between my Macs.
>
>However, I find that often when I go to connect I cannot "see" the 
>machine I want to log on to, even if it is awake and personal file
>sharing is switched on.
>
>The solution is to go to the offending machine, which appears to be
>not advertising its presence on the network and to switch personal
>file sharing off and then on again.  At this point it always appears
>on the network.

We often need to transfer files between committee members when we're 
at meetings (e.g. the membership database or committee minutes) and 
quite often the target computer doesn't appear in the Network view , 
requiring a fair amount of fiddling to get it to work.

The computers involved tend to be laptops using Airport, so the 
signal strength is often the cause: both computers need to have a 
good connection to the base station and then the computer with file 
sharing enabled has to advertise its presence while the other 
computer is listening. (This is done automatically every few seconds.)

On a few occasions it seems that the computer just won't appear at 
all in the Network view, so we try turning off File Sharing and 
turning it on again, which is enough to get it working again.

I assumed that this problem was related to having network connections 
which are often changing, due to being a laptop which gets moved 
around and reconnected frequently. Something in the mechanism which 
is advertising a file sharing server is a little unreliable and 
occasionally stops working if the network is unavailable, and doesn't 
resume when the network is present again.

>It such a nuisance having to do this several times a day.  Does 
>anyone have any bright solutions to offer?

Are the computers involved on a wired Ethernet rather than a wireless network?

If so, that rules out the changing network environment as a potential cause.

Is the computer with file sharing enabled going to sleep at all?

If so, it might be an issue with resumption of service advertising 
after waking up.

As for an actual solution: Jo's suggestion seems to be the best idea 
(use Connect to Server with added favourites, or keep an alias to the 
server after you've connected, or drag the server onto the right end 
of the dock).
-- 
David Empson
dempson at actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand