[WelMac] Personal file sharing

[John Crook]

Thanks to you both Jo and David.

Answers to David's questions interpolated below.

On 26 Mar 2006, at 1:28 PM, David Empson wrote:

> 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?

Generally wireless network using Airport Express, but I also get the  
same issue with a desktop machine that is on the wired LAN connected  
to the Airport base station.

The computers and base station are all quite close together and  
signal strength is top of the scale so I don't think we can blame the  
vagaries of wireless propagation.

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

Think you're right on this score.

>
> 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.
>

I think maybe you've hit the nail on the head here.  Once the server  
is mounted it doesn't  seem to to matter if the server has been  
asleep.  The client can reconnect after it wakes up.

But as you say, it does seem that the server won't advertise after it  
has been asleep.

> 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).
>

Thanks.  Looks like I shouldn't be so lazy.  Network browsing is  
really quite convenient when it works so I just hadn't bothered to  
set up a favourite in the server list or an alias.  Suppose I should.

However, all that said OS 10.4.5 works pretty well for server  
mounting.  Best version yet.  Apple seems to be (finally) getting it  
right.  They just need to fix this server advertising after wake-up  
now and it'll be great.

Does anybody else use this list ?-  I think it's a great idea, but  
I've been surprised how quiet it's been since I joined.  Perhaps it  
needs more promotion?

John