03-30-2010, 10:30 PM

Well, I updated from 10.6.2 to 10.6.3 and all of my installations (3 2008~2009 Intel MacBooks and 1 2009 Intel Mini) seemed to go just fine. However, even after numerous reboots of all of the systems, I am unable to access any folders on the Mini from any of my MacBooks. It is connected to my AirPort Extreme via ethernet, and all of the MacBooks are connected to the same via wireless. All of the MacBooks can see each other's folders in Finder, and screen sharing works as well. However, with the Mini, only screen sharing works. I get the "Failed to connect" message. I try to do a "Connect as.." and enter my username and password (the same account name and password on all systems) but it will not connect. Attempting to connect as Guest does not work either.
Using screen sharing I got on to the Mini, and it sees all of my shares on all of my MacBooks just fine. I even went so far as to remove all of the Mini's shares and then share them again. Still, I am unable to connect to them from any other system. Does anyone have any suggestions as to some possible troubleshooting steps which might help? This is of particular concern to me as all of my media and my Time Machine HDD are connected to the Mini via Firewire. Basically, I have no backup system in place which is a bit disturbing after doing an OS update.
Thanks!
Dave

03-30-2010, 10:43 PM

Maybe try the 10.6.3 Combo update and see if that fixes it. Mac OS X v10.6.3 Update (Combo)

03-30-2010, 11:38 PM

Well, I ended up rebooting the Mini without it's external HDD turned on. The Finder app on my MacBooks were then able to see the other shares on the Mini. When I turned on the external FW drive on the Mini, I immediately lost connection via Finder to browse any shares. On a hunch, I left the external HDD on and attached, but unmounted it. I then ran Disk Utility and ran through both Verify Disk and Repair Disk. I noticed a line that I had never seen before on an external drive validation:

Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.

Odd... so I mounted the volume off the external HDD again to the Mini. Bingo, the external drive is now available to all of my systems again.

My guess is that running the upgrade with the external disk attached caused some sort of errors due to it's content:
Several bootable Windows and Linux Virtual Box images, and the Time Machine backupdb and sparsebundle images of many systems. I'm thinking that in the future, I'll probably unmount my Time Machine volume before doing OS updates. Funny thing is, at work I always umount any NFS or CIFS shares and the like before doing backups and OS updates. Not sure why it never occurred to me to do this at home. I'll post again if it bugs out. So far, my MacBooks are all backing up the external HDD, so I'm hoping the issue is put to rest.

Thanks for the suggestion 6string. I downloaded the combo update .dmg to be safe and have it hanging out in case I need to run it.

Dave

03-30-2010, 11:59 PM

Not that I helped, but glad you got it sorted... I've never had anything hooked up while updating, so this didn't and wouldn't have occured to me, but good to know!
Not really relevant, but oddly enough, when I have my ext HD mounted, and I open microsoft messenger from my dock, I am unable to unmount without quitting messenger first. I have not to this day worked out why this happens, and it is the only app this happens with, where I am told that I can't unmount the partition as messenger is still in use. Why it is opening it from my ext HD, who knows?

03-31-2010, 02:18 AM

I checked my C2D Mini. Both internal and external drives showed up on the network. I had rebooted many times though since I first installed 10.6.3.