Start/stop internet sharing from a script

automationinternet-sharingNetworkterminalwifi

Is there a way to start/stop internet sharing from the command line or maybe an apple script?

The thing is that I move around my laptop between home and work. At one place I get wireless internet (and thus I have to disable internet sharing), and at the other I get internet from an ethernet cable and set up the computer to share the internet to other devices by creating a small wireless network.

But it's getting a bit tedious having to go into System Preferences and start/stop the internet sharing every time I switch locations, so I would like to have a quick command or script to launch and do the switch on demand.

Any hints or ideas?

Best Answer

To start Internet Sharing from the CLI:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.InternetSharing.plist

To stop, change the load to unload.

Note that if you have the pref pane open when you run this you will not see the change take effect immediately (the UI won't update), but it does work.

Related Solutions

Apple Internet Sharing doesn’t stay enabled

I never did find a way of making Internet Sharing stay on, but I did come up with a way of achieving the same result. With a quick bit of Ruby, I whipped up this solution.

Load IRB by opening terminal and typing irb

Copy and paste this into irb, and hit Enter to activate.

 while(true);sleep 15;puts Time.now.to_s + ": " + `launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.InternetSharing.plist 2>&1`;end

As it stands, the code will re-activate Internet Sharing every 15 seconds. Now, that may seem like too short of a period, but at 15 seconds there's a good chance that the connection will be re-enabled before any connection drops occur. You can change 15 to any number of seconds that you like.

This will result in a log such as:

Mon Jul 25 09:37:07 -0400 2011: com.apple.InternetSharing: Already loaded
Mon Jul 25 09:37:22 -0400 2011: com.apple.InternetSharing: Already loaded
Mon Jul 25 09:37:37 -0400 2011: com.apple.InternetSharing: Already loaded

It's important to remember that closing the window will terminate the script (Internet Sharing won't re-activate every 15 seconds), so if you need to close the window, consider using screen which is included on Macs.

MacOS – Internet sharing through WiFi disconnects

The first step is to know why the connection is failing, so you might need to look in the console log for messages that speak to en1 / link down / AirPort and such. I don't see a good troubleshooting article from Apple to start things out, but feel free to comment here or edit the answer yourself as we narrow down the when and then finally the why.

Best Answer

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Apple Internet Sharing doesn’t stay enabled

MacOS – Internet sharing through WiFi disconnects

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