Server disappearing periodically when accessed remotely?

TidBITS Talk
1

I have a headless M2 Pro Mac mini that I am using as a server (Ventura 13.2.1). I had both Ethernet and Wi-Fi enabled with Ethernet prioritised. I had Wi-Fi enabled so that I can use Universal Control.

The Mac mini worked fine at home but when I tried to access the server remotely it was only intermittently available. I could access the server via screen share and Plex at times but the services stopped working for no apparent reason, and return again later.

I turned Wi-Fi off on the server and the issue seems to have resolved. Any ideas why this might be (Ventura issue?) and whether I can fix so that I can have Wi-Fi enabled?

Unknown

2

Yep, the same thing happened to me. The Mac said that there was another device already with the computer name so did the old rename this computer to “name(2)”. Turning off WiFi solved it for me as well.

Apple seems to make this mistake again every few years.

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I haven’t been able to get remote screen sharing to work for years. Is this a Ventura improvement, or is there some router trick involved?

It works on my local network (after switching to SMB), though it takes several minutes for Screen Sharing to start up.

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I have had this with other computers in the past but not sure this is the issue here, I have not seen the rename message but may have missed it…

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I have never been able to get screen sharing to work remotely, I use at home but when away I use Chrome Remote Desktop. I have used for many years now, works very well…

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I’ll assume those having issues have screen sharing turned on and don’t have port 5900 blocked in the firewall.

I use screen sharing on several Macs at the office and also my home server. For external access I port map a custom port and then route to port 5900.

To connect lt looks like this:

vnc://123.234.345.456:7777 and in the router it points to 192.168.xxx.xxx:5900

(where 123.234.345.456 is the WAN address, 7777 is the custom WAN port, 192.168.xxx.xxx is obviously the address of your local server and 5900 is the default screen sharing port.

Using port mapping like this enables you to have multiple machines which use screen sharing using a single WAN address - you just use multiple custom ports. I should also point out I only allow connection from my known, static IPs (home and office). All other IPs (and ports) are denied.

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