Shared iTunes no longer available

[bug]

I have my iTunes lib shared out from my powermac and have always been able to use it from my powerbook until today, suddenly, it just doesn't show up in my list of sources. I indeed checked the settings to make sure I was still looking for shared music on the powerbook and still sharing on the powermac. Nothing has changed, it just isn't there anymore. My girlfriend's powerbook has no problem seeing it, I have the two side by side right now, all the settings the same, on the same network, same subnet, she can see it, I can't. These are the only two computers trying to connect, so I haven't hit the 5 user limit.

Is there some way to type in the location of a server to connect to or something like that? Nothing annoys me more then 'automatic' features that fail to perform their function and you can't do it manually.

What can I check for? Do I have any options? Or do I just have to hope that one day it just 'poofs' and appears in my list again?


Thanks!

bug

 

[bug]

I should also mention that I have no problem connecting to the powermac over afp, vnc, smb or pretty much any other acronym it supports.

 

[Whyren]

Is it possible the iTunes Sharing port on the OS X Firewall has closed? I've noticed ports close once in a while over a long period of time.

 

[iMeowbot]

Make sure they are both running the same version of iTunes. The 6.0.1 update release notes included a note about compatibility breaking again, and that would seem a good thing to check since it was so recent.

 

[bug]

No firewall is enabled at all (I'm behind a hardware firewall). Both have the most recent iTunes.

I have now determined that if I shut down iTunes on the server and open it again then I can get it on my Powerbook, but as soon as I put the powerbook to sleep I loose access again and have to restart it on the server. Because I have another laptop to test with, its easy for me to see that the server is still working and is still available. Its like my client is informed of the iTunes server when the server starts, but forgets about it as soon as I go to sleep or close iTunes and they never make any attempt to find each other again until I restart iTunes on the server.

Does someone know exactly what the protocol does for discovery? Does the server just broadcast availability once on startup and never do it again? That seems like a bad choice to me, as you'd need to have your client's iTunes open before opening iTunes on the server, but that seems to be the behavior I get.

Thanks!

 

[balamw]

Does someone know exactly what the protocol does for discovery?

Not sure, but it uses Bonjour (ne' Rendezvous) to advertise and locate services, so that may help you in your quest.

B