Any way to remotely reboot a Mac that is NOT connected to the Internet?
July 23, 2013 2:57 PM Subscribe
I am trying to access my home Mac remotely from the office (I use RealVNC). Unfortunately, there was an Internet outage, which is restored, but the Mac is no longer connected to the Internet. It is however connected to the router, which is accessible from the Internet. AFAIK the only way I can get the Mac reconnected is to reboot it. Is there any way I can reboot the Mac via the router? Or is there some other way to restore the Internet connection to the Mac remotely? I am pretty ignorant on these matters. Thanks for your help.
How do you know that the mac is connected to the router? It seems unlikely to me that it would be connected to the router but not routing traffic to the internet.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 3:04 PM on July 23, 2013
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 3:04 PM on July 23, 2013
Even if you have set up an SNMP agent to do so, which most people do not do, the computer needs to be able to connect to a network. If it isn't connected to the network, then you can't connect to it to remotely issue a reboot command.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:06 PM on July 23, 2013
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:06 PM on July 23, 2013
If you have remote admin access to the router I would try rebooting it, then double-checking that whatever tunneling you have setup to forward VNC to the Mac is still in place and pointing to the correct IP (is the Mac on a static IP or DHCP?). The problem might not be the Mac.
posted by bizwank at 3:09 PM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by bizwank at 3:09 PM on July 23, 2013 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: It occurs to me that I might be asking about the wrong problem. Whenever the Internet connection is interrupted for any reason, or I reboot the router, I have to reboot the Mac in order for it to see the router or restore the Internet connection. It's always been this way so I thought it was normal. Is it not? (See again the above about my being ignorant about this stuff.)
posted by Mo' Money Moe Bandy at 3:17 PM on July 23, 2013
posted by Mo' Money Moe Bandy at 3:17 PM on July 23, 2013
It occurs to me that I might be asking about the wrong problem. Whenever the Internet connection is interrupted for any reason, or I reboot the router, I have to reboot the Mac in order for it to see the router or restore the Internet connection. It's always been this way so I thought it was normal. Is it not? (See again the above about my being ignorant about this stuff.)
It's not. My computers, mac and otherwise, always reconnect by themselves in a minute or two if I reboot my router, after it comes back up. This is normal procedure. Imagine an office of 1,000 computers that loses internet connectivity for a few minutes, or a cell phone going in and out of service. Network connectivity is normally restored without restarting the computer.
This addition to your question implies that your mac is *not* actually connected to the router at this point, and won't be until you reboot it, which means there's nothing you can do, even theoretically, from the router end.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 3:39 PM on July 23, 2013
It's not. My computers, mac and otherwise, always reconnect by themselves in a minute or two if I reboot my router, after it comes back up. This is normal procedure. Imagine an office of 1,000 computers that loses internet connectivity for a few minutes, or a cell phone going in and out of service. Network connectivity is normally restored without restarting the computer.
This addition to your question implies that your mac is *not* actually connected to the router at this point, and won't be until you reboot it, which means there's nothing you can do, even theoretically, from the router end.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 3:39 PM on July 23, 2013
Is your Mac physically connected to your router with a cable, or is it on Wi-Fi?
posted by bizwank at 3:43 PM on July 23, 2013
posted by bizwank at 3:43 PM on July 23, 2013
Best answer: I'd solve the problem that you mention in your comment there, first, as that's not normal.
Also, think about the question and it answers itself - in this context, 'remotely' means 'via the internet'.
There ARE such things as 'remote rebooters' that can force-power cycle your machine but that's a last resort since it won't be a 'clean' reboot and could damage your data. Also, they're expensive, as they're meant to be installed in server racks. Definitely a better idea to troubleshoot why the computer loses connection to the router.
posted by destructive cactus at 6:09 PM on July 23, 2013
Also, think about the question and it answers itself - in this context, 'remotely' means 'via the internet'.
There ARE such things as 'remote rebooters' that can force-power cycle your machine but that's a last resort since it won't be a 'clean' reboot and could damage your data. Also, they're expensive, as they're meant to be installed in server racks. Definitely a better idea to troubleshoot why the computer loses connection to the router.
posted by destructive cactus at 6:09 PM on July 23, 2013
Best answer: If the router has a web interface you can access, check to see if the Mac is on the list of connected devices. Preferably, set the Mac to a specific IP address (likely uses DHCP but you can generally specify addresses for individual devices; may be safest to go outside the DHCP range (for example my home net uses 192.168.123.100-200 for DHCP, so all devices with set addresses are in the sub-100 range).
Next, if the router has port forwarding capability, you can forward an external port to the Mac and SSH in that way (e.g. If Mac is on IP ending in .99 you can set the router to forward anything on external port 99 to the internal address xxx.xxx.xxx.99, port 22 ... I generally use the same external port as the internal IP just to help me remember which device I am connecting to!). In that case, you can now SSH in to the router, using "SSH -p 99 MacUserName@router.external.ip.address", which will connect you to the Mac directly, and then issue a reboot command (sudo shutdown -r now).
But there is definitely something weird going on. My ancient Mac Mini has no issues reconnecting to the router if the router drops out or restarts; my only issue is that the Mini doesn't automatically reboot after a power outage, so if it's turned off I just can't access it at all.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:10 PM on July 23, 2013
Next, if the router has port forwarding capability, you can forward an external port to the Mac and SSH in that way (e.g. If Mac is on IP ending in .99 you can set the router to forward anything on external port 99 to the internal address xxx.xxx.xxx.99, port 22 ... I generally use the same external port as the internal IP just to help me remember which device I am connecting to!). In that case, you can now SSH in to the router, using "SSH -p 99 MacUserName@router.external.ip.address", which will connect you to the Mac directly, and then issue a reboot command (sudo shutdown -r now).
But there is definitely something weird going on. My ancient Mac Mini has no issues reconnecting to the router if the router drops out or restarts; my only issue is that the Mini doesn't automatically reboot after a power outage, so if it's turned off I just can't access it at all.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:10 PM on July 23, 2013
If it's an Apple router you might possibly be able to use BackToMyMac (it may have been renamed since iCloud) to wake or reboot it - there are a handful of odd little remote-access features in there. But from your later comment I'd guess that your Mac has completely lost contact with your router, so those features won't work.
posted by hattifattener at 6:57 PM on July 24, 2013
posted by hattifattener at 6:57 PM on July 24, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
If so i'd just ssh in and reboot(or if i was bored, try and quit and restart vnc from the terminal).
this is generally a situation in which i'd spend about 10-15 minutes on that and then immediately try and call someone on site to go wake up/reboot the machine. You don't have a lot of options here depending on what was running and enabled on the imac, and especially if you don't have another accessible system inside the same LAN.
posted by emptythought at 3:03 PM on July 23, 2013