(Possibly stupid) Mac sharing question

Factual Questions
1

I swear, I’m usually better at figuring these things out, but this has got me stumped. I swear I don’t remember changing any settings, but here’s the deal:

I have a first gen Mac Pro and a Mac Book Pro on my network. Recently (as in the last month and a half), I’ve been having some weird issues with accessing the Mac Pro from my shared devices on my MBP. The desktop shows up on the network, but when I try “Screen Share” it timesout. Same with the “Connect As…” fileshare option. This has never been problematic for me before.

What has seem to have changed, also, is that my desktop seems to be going into a “deeper” sleep than usual. Normally, when I wake it, I just press a key on the bluetooth keyboard and it springs to life. Not so any more. The keyboard produces no response, but if I jiggle my bluetooth mouse, it wakes the computer. This wake is accompanied by a slight clicking sound from within the machine. I don’t recall this click before, but I may just not have noticed it. After it wakes, I have to turn the Bluetooth keyboard manually on and off to get any response from it. The computer apparently senses that the keyboard’s always been connected, as doing this triggers a “Connection Lost” and “Connection Established” message. Also, while it’s sleeping, it’s not checking my emails or anything, as it would usually do.

I’ve had this desktop for three or four years now, and this is the first time I’ve noticed this behavior. I suspect I futzed up some sort of Energy Saver preference, but I haven’t figured out what I did. Am I supposed to have it set so “Computer Sleep” is set to “never”? I could have sworn that trying to access the computer on the network while it’s sleeping wakes it up, but perhaps I was just imagining it.

Once I wake the computer manually, I’m able to access it via Screen Share and file sharing. If the solution is to set the sleep to never, are there any major disadvantages to that?

2

Make sure that “Wake for Ethernet network access” is checked in the “Energy saver” control panel

3

If you allow the hard disk to sleep, it may take longer to wake up

4

“Wake for Ethernet” is checked and “put the hard disks to sleep” is unchecked, as it has been. The first is what I initially suspected to be the problem. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

5

Based on this, it sounds like your previous configuration did not actually put the computer to sleep, but just turned off the monitor. If the computer is in fact sleeping, it will not be able to retrieve email or anything like that. A sleeping computer is all but powered off. You can change the monitor and computer sleep settings in the Energy Saver preference pane.

Also, file sharing, the Screen Sharing app, and the like will not wake sleeping computers on their own. You need a separate application to send the wake packet, like this one. An automatic wake feature is possible that uses Bonjour if you are using a compatible Apple Airport base station. In that case the base station is responsible for waking the computer.

6

I agree. I think all that was in play before was what’s called “Display sleep” in the Energy Saver preference pane, not “Computer sleep”.

7

I guess that must be it. Any big disadvantage to not putting the computer to sleep?

8

It will use more power if it is always running. Modern computers wake from sleep so fast that I just keep them powered down and wake them remotely unless it is a system I access frequently.

9

So I should install WakeOnLan, then, huh. I’m wondering why my Bluetooth Apple-brand keyboard also refuses to wake the computer up (or wake up itself), but the mouse is fine.