Delphi - Checklist for PAServer Connection (Mac OSX)

Question

I have spent the better part of a day trying to connect to PAServer on MAC OSX from my Windows PC with no luck. I am not sure what I am missing.

I am using Delphi 10.2 Tokyo on Windows. Trying to connect to PAServer 19.0 on a Mac Mini running macOS Sierra (10.12.4) on which I already have XCode (v8.3.2) installed along with Command Line Tools.

Both the dev machine as well as the Mac Mini are connected to the same Wifi network. I even tried connecting both machines to a different network but with the same issue.

I get the same error message every time that the connection failed. I suspect that it has something to do with the network - where the 2 machines cannot see each other, but I don't know how I can confirm this or resolve it. I have tried to search on SO as well as online but have not found anything that has helped.

Has anyone seen this issue and overcome it? Is there a set of steps I can go thru to troubleshoot this? Any help or guidance would be most appreciated!

Answer 1

OK - I kept trying out different things and was able to solve this issue (one way to solve it I guess).

Because it seemed like it was network related, I tried first to create a hotspot with my phone and connected the dev machine and the Mac Mini to it. The PAServer connection worked.

So I looked for a way to do this via Windows. Here are the steps I followed:

1. Open Settings > Network & Internet (on Windows 10)
2. Go into Mobile Hotspot and select Wi-Fi in the Share my Connection From dropdown
3. Set a Network name and Network password
4. Turn on Share my Internet connection with other devices

Now on the Mac, connect to the network name we set up in step 3 and enter the password that was set. Then start PAServer on the Mac. That's it!

Now when you connect from Delphi to PAServer, the connection succeeds.

Note: Interestingly, when I was not using the mobile hotspot method on Windows, the IP address on PAServer (and on Windows) was 10.xx.xx.xx. With the mobile hotspot, the IP address is 192.xx.xx.xx.

Answer 2

I just configured (today) a new macos sierra with paserver. yes it's painfull :( don't use virtualbox (it's buggy and slow), but use instead VMware, it's work like a charm. it's much more easy to have only one computer to develop than 2. also you can copy/past the log or anythink else from macosx to windows (or vice-versa) in just one click. and you will not have any internet problem or anything else ...