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.Mac Back to Mac?
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soon2bmac
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Jan 8, 2008, 04:25 PM
 
Has anyone gotten this to work. I can not seem to figure it out. I am able to do the screen sharing when on one mac on a college network connecting to my laptop in my room. But I am unable to take one laptop off campus and connect back to my mac while out of the campus by using back to my mac. I can not even seem to get my laptop in my room to be under shared computers on my office laptop. Anyone have any insight to what Im doing wrong?

Thanks
     
Person Man
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Jan 8, 2008, 05:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by soon2bmac View Post
Has anyone gotten this to work. I can not seem to figure it out. I am able to do the screen sharing when on one mac on a college network connecting to my laptop in my room. But I am unable to take one laptop off campus and connect back to my mac while out of the campus by using back to my mac. I can not even seem to get my laptop in my room to be under shared computers on my office laptop. Anyone have any insight to what Im doing wrong?

Thanks
It may not be you doing anything wrong. It may be your university's network. They might be running a firewall that closes the ports that Back to my Mac relies on.
     
JKT
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Jan 8, 2008, 06:16 PM
 
Also, some routers are not compatible with the feature (such as my Netgear router).
     
Cadaver
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Jan 8, 2008, 10:40 PM
 
Yeah, I can't get it to work either from home to office. The firewall at my workplace however is freaking nuts. They block virtually everything. We have two networks - one internal running on both ethernet and wifi, and a public network for visitors running on wifi (separate SSID). On both networks - even the "public" network - the ONLY ports open to the internet are 80 (http) and 443 (https), and whatever ports are used by the encrypted Citrix server. I can't even check my email from work on my laptop since all POP3/SMTP and IMAP ports are blocked. Web mail only. Its freaking ridiculous.

Internal traffic such as the MS Exchange server, etc., don't get out of the building.

That's one of the few things I don't like about where I work - the IT department is super paranoid about everything. Even visitors (patients, families, students, etc.) can't check their email because the IT department fears that someone will send large volumes of spam from their network.

So no Back To My Mac from work for me. I haven't had a chance to try it from a hotel or a Starbucks or something yet.
     
awaspaas
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Jan 9, 2008, 02:20 AM
 
I got it to work for a few days, nothing since December though. I think it's quite buggy.
     
C.A.T.S. CEO
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Jan 9, 2008, 02:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by awaspaas View Post
I got it to work for a few days, nothing since December though. I think it's quite buggy.
Same here, my home machines won't show up on my MacBook sense early December.
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Macola
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Jan 10, 2008, 02:31 PM
 
I've been unable to get this to work, though I only tried this month (i.e., using 10.5.1). I've tried all of Apple's suggestions about logging out and back into .Mac, etc. My router at home is set up to allow uPNP. My home Mac shows up in the Finder sidebar of my work Mac, but when I try to connect, it always times out and fails.
I do not like those green links and spam.
I do not like them, Sam I am.
     
ooninay
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Jan 11, 2008, 06:32 PM
 
I've never been able to get it to work anywhere other than for two computers on the same network. Once I have to connect over the internet, it never works (other computer is never visible). This has been true at every other place I've tried it in (school, work, my mom's house). I have an Airport router so I know it's not the issue, which means that either a whole lot of routers must not work with it, or a whole lot of networks are set up to block those ports. Is it just my bad luck or is Back to My Mac going to end up being a kind of vapourware feature that only a few lucky people will be able to use?
     
Cadaver
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Jan 11, 2008, 10:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by ooninay View Post
...or is Back to My Mac going to end up being a kind of vapourware feature that only a few lucky people will be able to use?
Yep. Because in Steve Jobs' world, everyone runs an open wireless network and no one runs a firewall.
     
cms
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Jan 12, 2008, 11:47 AM
 
This works for me "sometimes". And "sometimes" is as random as being able to establish a remote connection in the morning but not after lunch; or vice versa. It's really odd. When it does work, it's very impressive, really useful and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser/sales tool. However, it's so flaky that I've given up using it as "wow factor" when demo-ing Apple kit for sale. It's very embarrassing -- both for me and for Apple -- when it doesn't work as advertised and sadly at the present time I have no way of knowing if/when it will connect successfully or if I will even be able to "see" my home G5 Powermac from my MBP. As a networking pro, I am aware that in certain situations a successful connection is dependent on individual router/firewall configurations but if I can configure Apple Remote Desktop to find my home computer in London (on a static IP) without any difficulty from a hotel room in Hong Kong, then surely it can't be that complicated for Apple to use the .Mac "reflection point" effectively.
     
besson3c
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Jan 12, 2008, 02:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cadaver View Post
Yeah, I can't get it to work either from home to office. The firewall at my workplace however is freaking nuts. They block virtually everything. We have two networks - one internal running on both ethernet and wifi, and a public network for visitors running on wifi (separate SSID). On both networks - even the "public" network - the ONLY ports open to the internet are 80 (http) and 443 (https), and whatever ports are used by the encrypted Citrix server. I can't even check my email from work on my laptop since all POP3/SMTP and IMAP ports are blocked. Web mail only. Its freaking ridiculous.

Internal traffic such as the MS Exchange server, etc., don't get out of the building.

That's one of the few things I don't like about where I work - the IT department is super paranoid about everything. Even visitors (patients, families, students, etc.) can't check their email because the IT department fears that someone will send large volumes of spam from their network.

So no Back To My Mac from work for me. I haven't had a chance to try it from a hotel or a Starbucks or something yet.

Would telling your IT department that somebody could send large amounts of spam on port 80 or 443 help affect anything in your favor?

The best way to combat stuff like that is by being aware of every machine in your network so you can trace stuff like this, but simply trusting that attacks will occur on their proper ports is by no means bulletproof security.
     
besson3c
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Jan 12, 2008, 02:52 PM
 
My understanding of Back to my Mac is that it is simply a dyndns service that also allows for Kerberos based authentication that doesn't require entering a password for services that require authentication (i.e. file sharing services). Perhaps this is why Kerberos now seems to be a standard open port on Leopard installs...

If you can live with typing your password each time you authenticate to your home Mac for file sharing, you can set this up by creating yourself a dyndns account (which are free), entering your dyndns account info in your router admin settings (assuming your router, like most, support dyndns), setting up port forwarding on your router admin, and connecting to this address. Of course, wherever you are connecting from should support outbound traffic on the port needed by the service you are connecting to.

If you are having a hard time getting an IT person to open up the AFP port (548, I believe), you might see if the SSH port is open. If not, you could probably make a better case for opening this up. With this open, you can make connections to your home Mac via MacFUSE/sshfs. Download MacFusion if you want a GUI for connecting to SSHfs shares.
     
desertmac
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Jan 13, 2008, 10:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
If you are having a hard time getting an IT person to open up the AFP port (548, I believe), you might see if the SSH port is open. If not, you could probably make a better case for opening this up. With this open, you can make connections to your home Mac via MacFUSE/sshfs. Download MacFusion if you want a GUI for connecting to SSHfs shares.

Have you tested MacFusion with Leopard and the latest version of MacFuse?
MBP 15" 2.4 Ghz 4Gb
MBA 13" 1.6 Ghz 2Gb
     
besson3c
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Jan 13, 2008, 01:09 PM
 
I use MacFUSE all the time, but I don't use MacFusion, I have my own connection scripts... MacFUSE itself works just fine under Leopard.
     
Person Man
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Jan 13, 2008, 01:19 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
My understanding of Back to my Mac is that it is simply a dyndns service that also allows for Kerberos based authentication that doesn't require entering a password for services that require authentication (i.e. file sharing services). Perhaps this is why Kerberos now seems to be a standard open port on Leopard installs...
Perhaps to make Back to My Mac more useful Apple should try to implement it over an SSH tunnel or have it try multiple ports that are likely to be open on numerous firewalls?
     
besson3c
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Jan 13, 2008, 01:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by Person Man View Post
Perhaps to make Back to My Mac more useful Apple should try to implement it over an SSH tunnel or have it try multiple ports that are likely to be open on numerous firewalls?
Well, I think it would be more accurate to say that they should try skipping Kerberos auth, because I think this is where many problems are occurring. Without port 88 open, this doesn't work, yet this is sort of icing.

The only way I can think of getting your SSH tunnel idea to work is converting AFP requests to rsync requests, as rsync supports OS X metadata, and network share browsing with SSHfs. Just thinking out loud.
( Last edited by besson3c; Jan 13, 2008 at 01:42 PM. )
     
ooninay
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Jan 13, 2008, 03:08 PM
 
I don't know much of anything about ports and what protocols use which ports, but FolderShare is a file-syncing app that works over the internet and doesn't have any problems working with Macs. I wonder if any of its techniques could be used in Back to my Mac?
     
Cadaver
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Jan 13, 2008, 05:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
If you are having a hard time getting an IT person to open up the AFP port (548, I believe), you might see if the SSH port is open. If not, you could probably make a better case for opening this up. With this open, you can make connections to your home Mac via MacFUSE/sshfs. Download MacFusion if you want a GUI for connecting to SSHfs shares.
With over 10,000 employees, there's a near-zero chance of the IS department capitulating to the firewall requests of a handful of Mac users. Plus, since only authorized devices are allowed on their ethernet network or internal wireless (and I don't know the password), there is absolutely no way they'll open the ports necessary to make it work. There are several internal applications that would benefit hundreds more than a few Mac-specific changes, and we still can't get it approved.

(and yeah, our IT folks - most of them anyway - couldn't care less about making life easy for anyone so long as the network is "secure", and the ones that do care are in no position of power to do anything about it)
     
stoneage
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Jan 17, 2008, 12:22 PM
 
It doesn't matter if I am using B2MM or ARD, I can't copy files to another computer since the 10.5 install. I am able to see the desktop and run functions remotely, but can't access any files or share.
grrrrrrrr Apple!!!!
W....liar or idiot? Pick two.
     
damiensmunki
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Feb 6, 2008, 08:39 PM
 
Hey, guys... I recently bought a MacBook, and I'm enjoying using Back to my Mac to access my Mac Pro. Lately, however, my B2mM computers have failed to show up in the Finder sidebar, and three quarters of the time, Leopard shows the wrong icon for the respective computers (i.e. - shows an ACD icon for the MB). Any clue if B2mM will be made more stable with 10.5.2? Also, I haven't read about anyone else experiencing the changing icons. Am I the only one who's seen this? Thanks, guys!
Rob
     
Cadaver
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Feb 8, 2008, 05:50 PM
 
^^ The icon "issue" isn't really an issue. It uses an ACD icon for any/every Mac, and a beige CRT with a BSOD for each PC.
     
cms
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Feb 9, 2008, 04:24 AM
 
Originally Posted by Cadaver View Post
^^ The icon "issue" isn't really an issue. It uses an ACD icon for any/every Mac, and a beige CRT with a BSOD for each PC.
Errrr...not quite so. I have a MacPro. On the rare occasions Back to my Mac works for me, the icon displayed is of a MacPro box.
     
JKT
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Feb 9, 2008, 06:43 AM
 
Originally Posted by stoneage View Post
It doesn't matter if I am using B2MM or ARD, I can't copy files to another computer since the 10.5 install. I am able to see the desktop and run functions remotely, but can't access any files or share.
grrrrrrrr Apple!!!!
Have you checked the advanced options to make sure you have the permissions to do this?

     
   
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