Hi Nicolas,

I'd be happy to implement connecting over Bonjour, but I'm not sure how to.
As far as I know, Bonjour is mostly used to advertise services.

ConnectMeNow uses one of two mounting options: the macOS API and the Terminal style "mount".
Did you try both (under advanced options of each individual share)?

To be honest I've never seen Finder mount anything instantly - seeing the shares on my NAS takes already 2-3 seconds (macOS Sequoia M1 Max). I'm pretty confident Finder utilities the same API ConnectMeNow uses (per Apple Developer documentation).

Having said that, I'd love to see a faster mounting mechanism.
Do you have any reference/documentation that could be useful?
I've never looked in the details of Bonjour before on a developer level.

hello Hans

Thanks for your reply. The main issue beside connection time is the fact that the monted server appears as a different server

 As you can see in this screenshot.

"Serveur-Magenta" (with the macpro icon) is the server as seen by the mac as usual. (I assume via Bonjour services)

"Serveur-Magenta.local" is the one connected with Connectmenow. I have to specify the ".local" in connectmenow share definition otherwise it doesn't find the server.

If I put the IP address I'll get a connected server whose name is the ip address.

That mean than anything pointing on the network share won't work because the server name differs even if it's the same server.

As said I don't know how Automounter works but it does not behave like this when connecting this same server on the same machine. I get connected the usual way. (there is an option by default "using bonjour" to connect) The problem is that Automounter doesn't store password so I have to enter them at each connection. It's why I would prefer to use Connectmenow.

I was wondering if you had any idea on this

Here my share settings. I've maybe done that wrong

Thanks

I cannot see my NAS in Finder, unless I go to "Networks" (NAS is called Marvin)

Note: I do recall older macOS versions list server. Not sure if Finder under Sequoia can do this, or if I have changed something way back when. Tried looking for a setting, but couldn't find anything.

How the name appears is, as far as I know, not something I can change. Unless I learn/figure out how mounting through the Bonjour service would work.

Long story short: right now ConnectMeNow doesn't support this, and I will have to figure how to get it to do this. 😞 

Hello Hans

Thanks for your feedback. The server appears in the left pane once you have connected to it once. I think you have to tick bonjour computer and connected server in finder pref :

 Let me know if you find something about this :)

Thank you

I still have to dig into the details, but as far as I can see Bonjour only helps find a server/share, but doesn't do the actual mounting.
Still have to read all this in the Apple Bonjour Documentation to make sure I understood this correctly.
Due to family issues, it may take a bit before I get to reading this, but I'll do my best 😊 

Hello Hans

Hope you're fine. Sorry for my very long delayed reply.

Could you find anything regarding Bonjour and our las year testing ?

Thanks

Mounting through Bonjour has not yet been implemented, as of this moment I do not quite now to.

I just created something somewhat related to this: A mechanism that uses several ways to identify servers and server aliases. Meaning CMN can now see if existing mounts match a certain server where it looks for aliases on the network. For example MyServer vs 192.168.1.100 (even for NAS devices with multiple Ethernet ports and IP Addresses).
While creating this, I was unable to find a way to mount through Bonjour.

From what I have found:
Bonjour itself does not mount network shares and is therefor not any faster than a regular mount.
Bonjour is only for service discovery, not for mounting.
The actual mount speed depends on the file sharing protocol (SMB, AFP, NFS, etc), network latency, authentication, and DNS performance — not Bonjour itself.

So for Finder to be faster going through the steps:
1) Finder sees (eventually) servers in the network (not always all that reliable mind you)
2) On seeing a server it may right away determine available shares (and cache these or not?)
3) The actually mount process appears not any slower or faster than CMN does, especially when using API calls, as Finder uses the same calls.

This is the best I could find.
It would however be interesting how Finder mounts a share this fast.

Also something to think about: CMN does async mounting.
A call is send to the macOS framework to request a mount, and then CMN goes into a waiting mode until macOS sends a notification. There will be a delay, as macOS doesn't send the notification instantly. Maybe this is where we perceive a delay?

Hi Hans

Thanks for your reply

Do you mean there is an update to CMN to try your new mechanism ?

Let me know

There will be in the next few days.
Running tons of test at the moment, since the mechanism (and other new features/improvements) have quite an impact.

To name a few:
- Finding/Detecting server aliases (eg. IP addresses and Hostnames) so that mounts not done by CMN will be detected
- Option to do a read-only mount (although I would recommend setting this on a user level on the "server" that runs the share)
- New Share type: Only send a WakeOnLAN and optionally run a shell script
- New Share type: Only run a shell script
- Bug fix in MAC address detection
- Option to eject removable drives when Mac goes to sleep (feature request, not a big fan as I can see where this can go wrong)
- Advanced Settings is now resizable and scrollable (for small screens)
- Better Wake On LAN (more robust)
- Better universal binary for SSHPASS
- Commandline mount for WebDAV
- Revamped menu a little
- Added menu options to eject removable drives (eg. USB)
- SSHFS now sets a more userfriendly volume name
- Added "run script before mount"
- Optionally prevent mounting when screen is locked (eg. login screen

To name a few ...
Again: I still have a lot of testing to do as most of these function I do not use myself 😉 

I just released the beta for 4.0.19 ... it may not resolve your issue (been a while).
Worth trying though 😊 

hello Hans

Oh thanks, i'll test it and let you know

Nico