these have been working successfully from my nucleus to \\.....\ Roon_backup > RoonBackups and RoonBackups on my MacBook Pro for a couple of years. I recently upgraded my mac os to sequoia 15.3.1 and now I cannot backup.
Error message 'Backup failed / Backup direc tory not available'. I have changed nothing - why is this happening ?
Hi @Steven_Bond,
Thanks for reaching out about this issue. Since this started after upgrading to Sequoia, it may be related to local network permissions.
Can you check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network on your Mac and make sure that local network access is enabled for Roon? If it’s already toggled on, try toggling it off and then back on again.
Let us know if you notice any improvement after trying this!
Hello Daniel,
Thanks for getting back to me.
I followed your suggestion - the local network access was already toggled on so I did the off/ back on as you suggested… I then tried a forced backup but unfortunately yielded the same outcome as before.
I hope I haven’t created a false trail by mentioning the sequoia upgrade but I have done nothing else to my system which was working fine before and is working fine after with this one exception.
I rebooted the router and checked the local IP addresses both before and after doing so. The last 3 digits on the IP address for the router and the nucleus were and are not the same. I do not understand what this means technically albeit I understand your point that they should be the same. So what do I need to do to achieve this ? Please make no assumptions about technical skill - I uses roon for the music !
No, the last three digits absolutely must NOT be the same. IP addresses must be unique. (It’s the same as with street addresses. Packages wouldn’t arrive reliably if several houses had the same street address and number).
There are some subtleties that we can ignore in home networks. In typical home networks, the addresses should look like:
aaa.bbb.ccc.xxx
aaa.bbb.ccc.yyy
aaa.bbb.ccc.zzz
The aaa.bbb.ccc part must be the same across all devices. (It denotes the network). The xxx, yyy, and zzz parts must be unique for each device.
Thank you Suedkiez. I’m not sure what to make of what you say. I understand your point and the logic of it seems sensible to me. It does seem to conflict with what Benjamin has said (or at least my understanding of what he said), so at the moment I remain a music fan who can’t read music hoping someone who can will whistle me a tune !
Hey @Steven_Bond, @jamie here from the Marketing team. I experienced the same thing when I updated to Sequoia this week. You were on the right track when you suspected the update.
In typical Apple style, it introduced a new twist on top of those mentioned by @daniel, @benjamin, & @Suedkiez.
In my case, the update switched the Private Wi-Fi address setting to “random”, which changed the IP address of my Macbook and broke my backups. This may be the cause of your issue as well.
Give this a try:
Open your System Settings and click Wi-Fi
Click Details
Check your Private Wi-Fi address setting, and switch it to Off
Click OK
After doing that, it reset my Mac’s IP address to one it had before the update - and my backups worked again. Hope it helps you as well!
What he meant was that the Nucleus and Mac must be on the same network, i.e., must have the same aaa.bbb.ccc in the IP address.
However, the final number must be unique (xxx, yyy, zzz) as it identifies the individual device.
This is the prerequisite. (Sometimes, people’s home routers create different networks, e.g., one for wifi and one for wired. Then one has a network address like aaa.bbb.ccc and the other has eee.fff.ggg. This doesn’t work because Roon traffic doesn’t traverse different networks).
If your devices are on the same aaa.bbb.ccc already, then the problem may be caused by the additional complication that @jamie explained in the post above.
Hi @Steven_Bond, @Suedkiez and @jamie shared some great suggestions. Please try them out and let us know if you’re able to make backups again. We’re happy to help if you run into any issues!
Hello Jamie - thanks for your response . I tried what you suggested and then tried a forced backup and…its seems to work ! An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters ( remember them ?) would have finished the complete works of shakespeare before I would have got to that so I am very grateful for your input.One outstanding question is that I now have an amber privacy warning flag against the private Wi-Fi address option. should I be concerned about this ?
Nice work! We’re all quite grateful for @jamie here at Roon, I’m happy he was able to get you properly sorted and back to your music.
Not necessarily—this is mostly an informational warning from macOS. As long as your router maintains it’s firewall (as well as the Mac firewall) you should be totally fine.
The wifi privacy option exists to make the device less trackable on public wifi networks (think coffeeshops or airports).
On the home wifi this doesn’t matter, and in fact one typically wants the device to be trackable (i.e., the device should be recognized as the same device every time. This only applies to the local network as this info is never shared with the outside).
That’s why it’s a per-network option that can have a different setting on each network.
