I use a 2013 Macbook Air (i7, Big Sur) as a Plex and Time Machine Server. It’s hardwired. I’ve disabled sleep. However, Time Machine backups keep failing and I really don’t know what to do anymore:
My main Mac (M2, Tahoe) keeps losing connection to it. It disappears from the sidebar at random times of the day and it doesn’t come back on its own. If I try to manually initiate a backup I get a message about the server being unavailable. When this happens, the server sometimes tells me that it’s got a self-assigned IP and it shows offline in my router’s GUI. Unplugging and replugging the cable usually fixes it. See here:
However, some other times, the connection on the server remains normal and, in those cases, a restart of my main M2 Macbook also fixes the problem. This doesn’t make any sense in my head.
It’s worth noting that I had an older (i5) Macbook Air with OCLP-enabled Ventura that I used in the same manner. It seems to work then. Also, counterintuitively, when I try to set the newer one up to connect over WiFi rather than Ethernet, the problem seems to practically disapper.
Things I’ve tried so far:
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Restarting the router
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Flushing the cache and restarting mdnsresponder
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Cleaning the thunderbolt port
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Changing the ethernet cable
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Keeping the lid open on the server
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Formatting the drive and rebuilding Time Machine from zero
I’m almost out of ideas!
I am considering exploring whether to use OCLP on the i7 Macbook Air to install Ventura and see if that fixes the problem but I’d rather see if anyone else can point me to a fix first so that I don’t have to install patches on a Mac that, for all intents and purposes, will only ever be used as a file server. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot!
