Hi Matt,
I suspect that this is indeed connected to your previous problem and is down to file/folder permissions issues. I have had similar issues in the past and resolved them but all the following is through the foggy filter of an aged brain/memory! As you will be aware, all files & folders have permissions which govern who/what can access/read/write/run them. Back in the old (pre-OSX) days networking was less common outside the corporate world but quite a few of us set-up home ethernet networks and it was our Macs which first put this in the hands of us mere mortals (rather than networking experts). It was not uncommon for some of us venturing into these areas to manually change these permissions to achieve various outcomes when sharing files etc but, even then, you had to be careful. Nowadays, home networks are ubiquitous and easy to setup and, in general, OSX handles it fairly seamlessly & we don’t have to worry too much about permissions – until we do! There are all sorts of permissions and levels (root, system, users, group etc) but I think your problem here is with user permissions & file/folder ownership. In general you are the owner of your user files and folders and OSX keeps the visibility and accessibility of these files/folders limited to the owner – if you look in the “Users” folder, at the top level of your HD, you will see a number of folders: Your home folder will have the house icon – you are the owner and have full access to the contents A shared folder – any user has access to this and it is useful if you want to have documents/items that are available to any user. If you have more than one user account, then there will be a folder for each additional user, owned by that user. In general, if you try to look in a user folder belonging to another user you will see the standard list of user folders – Desktop, documents etc – plus any added by the user. However, except for their “Public” folder you will see that the folders have a “no entry” icon on them. If you select one of these folders you will not be able to view the contents and if you check the permissions of the folder, you will see that the owner has read/write access and “everyone” (else) has No Access. This is how it should be – it keeps each users “stuff” private to themselves. The problem is that, with regard to user permissions, OSX determines a “user” not by the “User Name” but by the “User ID”. The User ID is allocated automatically every time you setup a new account. If setting up a Mac from scratch, the first user will have a User ID of 501, the next user account 502, etc. Typically when you get a new computer and use the OSX migration assistant to move your info from the old computer to the new computer then it takes care of matching user accounts and IDs. Also if you only have one user account on each computer then they will all have user ID 501 and you will probably have no problems even if you set them all up manually (without using migration assistant). However, problems can arise when you setup computers separately with users that you want to be the same, ie same user name (probably same password) but, for example, you add the users in a different order and they end up with different User IDs. I suspect that this may be your problem but, before we try to resolve the problem, we need to confirm that this is actually the case - so we need to compare users and user IDs across your 3 iMacs. It is easy to check the User ID for any user account: Open System Preferences » Users & Groups, unlock the pane if necessary, right-click your user name (the single list entry in the Current User section), and select Advanced Options. A dialog box will open. DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING! We are just looking! You will note that “Full Name” is the name you use to login and “Account name” is the name of your user folder in the “Users” folder. Now check the field User ID and make a note of the number. Exit the box by selecting CANCEL (YOU DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE ANYTHING Repeat this for every other user account on each iMac (in the Other Users section) Make a list/table to summarise user accounts and user IDs for each of the 3 computers. Report this info back to us and we can take it from there. If your problem is what I suspect then you will probably have the same User ID for the relevant account on the two older iMacs but a different user ID for the account on the newer iMac (2013 HD). Of course, it might be something completely different – but it is an easy check – just don’t start changing anything in the Advanced window! HTH Cheers Neil From: <wamug.org.au-wamug-boun...@lists.wamug.org.au> on behalf of Matt Falvey <mmfal...@bigpond.net.au> Reply-To: <wamug@wamug.org.au> Date: Friday, 15 May 2020 at 11:54 To: Wamug List <wamug@wamug.org.au> Subject: iMac not connecting to other iMac's Hi, I have three iMacs (one is a recent second hand one - 2013 HD) and I am trying to transfer documents from one to the other. All show up as “Shared” on the side bar of the finder window. With the two older iMacs when I click on the 2013 HD icon in Shared the window in the next column opens and states the HD name and “Connection Failed” and I have the option Connect As and Share Screen. When I try Connect As and try to connect as the Registered User using the Name and Password, it reverts to the previous screen, with the Connection Failed. (The two older iMacs connect to each other.) If I go to the 2013 HD finder window and click on either of the other two HD’s they connect straight away and I am able to transfer files to the respective computer. I have also have a problem with the new 2013 HD, which was posted last week, with hindsight this may be associated to this problem and that is that when I try to save files to one of the other iMacs I get a message “The document “xxxxx.pdf” could not be exported as “ xxxxxxx.pdf” as You don’t have Permission. To view or change permissions select the item in the Finder and choose File > Get Info. Which needless to say doesn’t work. So it seems as if for whatever reason the other two are communicating inwards with the 2013 HD but something is stopping it from being able to connect outwards. I would be grateful if anyone has any ideas or solutions to share. Thanks Matt. -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - Guidelines - Settings & Unsubscribe -
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