MacOS – Why “wake for network access” does not work when setting CI server

macospower-managementsleep-wake

We need to set up a CI server using mac.

We set up our private gitlab server on the cloud and gitlab-runner on a mac at the office. When the mac does not go to sleep it works well. But when it goes to sleep the runner won’t wake.

I already set “wake for network access” but it does not work. The pipeline job won’t run when the mac goes to sleep. I further test that if I use Fing on my iPhone to wake the mac the pipeline job will then wake up to run but it will stop at the step where it needs to start a GUI test tool to actually run the test case.

Does anyone have any experience with that? I can’t just turn on the mac 24*7.

—– update —–

According to this KB it seems for shared resource. This probably explains why it does not work for my case.

If you’re sharing your computer’s resources, such as a shared printer
or iTunes playlist, you can set your computer to wake from sleep when
other users access those resources.

Best Answer

I used a iMac as a web server and left the computer running 24/7 for months at a time. I did set the Mac to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" and allowed the display to sleep after 15 minutes. I set the Computer sleep to never.