lan

Automatically Disabling WiFi in macOS Mojave When Connecting to Ethernet

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I don’t know why, but macOS doesn’t seem to have an automatic ability to shut down the WiFi adapter when an Ethernet connection is detected. It’s a simple thing that can cause several problems, especially if you are in an environment where you may need to authenticate to a network or access VPN services.

It may be possible to manage locations and some additional tools, but I didn’t want something that required retooling every time I used my system in a new location, so I decided to write a simple script, using built-in tools for everything except the execution of the script.

This script will check for both an active WiFi connection and also an active Ethernet connection. If it detects both, it will shutdown the WiFi interface and display a notification, via macOS notifications, that it has done this. I haven’t tested this on previous versions of macOS (only Mojave), though if the rest of the commands work, the script might function by simply removing the statement that generates a notification.

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Accessing Two Different Windows Shares With Different Credentials Simultaneously From The Same Server

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Perhaps I was aware of this restriction a long time ago, when I used a Windows system as my primary desktop, but I completely forgot this. Windows does not permit accessing two different shares that use different credentials when they exist on the same system. There may be more to it than that. For example, it may only apply to a Windows user account logged into a desktop system.

Regardless of the details, I wasn’t able to access two shares on a network drive from the ASUS (Windows 7). Every time I tried to connect to the second share I’d receive a vague error message stating that the connection couldn’t be made. I knew the credentials I was using were correct.

One solution is to disconnect the first share and then connect to the other one. However, I was using that share for the Windows system backup and I didn’t want to bother with having to remove the connection and then re-establish it.

After searching a few pages and forums I came across one post in the Microsoft TechNet forums that explained a workaround. That this even works is laughable, but it really does. User Mustafa Radha explains that using the IP address for one share, and then using the network name for the other share, will work. Indeed it does.

For example, assume I’m trying to connect to a machine named “Server” with an IP address of 192.168.1.2, and it has two shares named “Photos” and “Documents”. You could access both shares at the same time by using these paths:

\\Server\Photos\
\\192.168.1.2\Documents\

Of course, you could swap the IP and name as desired.

Source: Microsoft TechNet – Connecting to multiple shares on a single server with multiple credentials? (System Error 1219)