ardagent crashes repeatedly

Question

ardagent crashes repeatedly

I have one workstation that just refuses to run Remote Desktop client. The machine was previously fine, however performing software updates and updating our third party software, somewhere along the line ardagent began crashing. I've attempted to resolve the issue with the third party software, however it seems to be an issue with the client instead.

It's an Intel Mac Mini running 10.4.11 with ARD Client 3.2.2. When started, I get errors in my system log once ARDAgent is launched and one second later ARDAgent crashes. This repeats unless I manually quit ARDAgent through Activity Monitor.

By tinkering with the permissions on /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement to 775 instead of 755, ARDAgent will start, but generate errors on setting effective GID and UID.

I'm at a loss, I've attempted to reinstall ARD Client several times both with install packages and manually through Terminal, no luck either way.

I am hoping someone else out there can help me figure it out!
--Jose

Posted on Aug 18, 2009 10:22 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Aug 18, 2009 10:47 AM in response to Stony Brook University

Permissions should look like this:
/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 May 12 18:37 ARDAgent.app drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Nov 14 2006 AppleVNCServer.bundle /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app drwxr-xr-x 9 root wheel 306 May 12 18:20 Contents /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2143 Mar 5 10:37 CodeResources -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 960 Mar 5 10:35 Info.plist drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 May 12 18:20 MacOS -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 8 Aug 27 2008 PkgInfo drwxr-xr-x 28 root wheel 952 May 12 18:20 Resources drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 204 May 12 18:44 Support -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 456 Mar 5 10:37 version.plist
Short of setting those right, the only other solutions would be to delete the preferences -and reset them- or re-image the workstation.

Reply

Answer 2

Aug 18, 2009 1:41 PM in response to Mabel O'Farrell

Thanks. Permissions match upon install, but that is when the ARDAgent crashes every two seconds and attempts to restart. If I change the permissions of ARDAgent.app to 775, it at least starts, but spawns several child processes of AppleVNCServer.

Sadly, reimaging is not an option at this point. The machine is running a license server that is bound by MAC address, I bring this down for the hour or two to reinstall everything and the entire office of 50 users cannot use their software. Not to mention the headaches of reinstalling both applications. I am hoping someone knows of the hidden files that may need to be deleted in order to completely reset ARD on the client.

Reply

Answer 3

Aug 18, 2009 4:17 PM in response to Stony Brook University

Stop the 'Remote Management' in the 'Sharing' System Prefpane. Then in Terminal.app do:
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/RemoteDesktop.menu sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ sudo rm /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist sudo rm /System/Library/Launchdaemons/com.apple.RemoteManagement.PrivilegeProxy.plist sudo rm /System/Library/Launchdaemons/com.apple.RFBRegisterMDNS_RemoteManagement.plist sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteManagement.plist sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/RemoteDesktopClient.pkg
Then download and install the Apple Remote Desktop Client v3.2.2 installer.

Reply

Answer 4

Aug 19, 2009 7:31 AM in response to Mabel O'Farrell

Thanks, but even when I performed every step above, as soon as it's freshly installed it crashes again. There is obviously some hidden file someplace that is causing the application to crash. Sad that I'll have to redo a workstation because of something simple like this.

Reply

Answer 5

Aug 19, 2009 11:40 AM in response to Stony Brook University

Unfortunately that looks like what may have to be done if those steps don't work. Before you re-image, clone to an external drive or make a disk image of the boot drive so you have a fallback if something goes awry.

Reply

Answer 6

Sep 27, 2009 1:10 PM in response to Stony Brook University

I have run into a similar problem a couple of times but today was the first time I was actually able to resolve it!

The fix I used is to remove the /Library/Application Support/Apple/Remote Desktop/Client directory and restart the client. For whatever reason the tasks.plist in the Tasks folder found inside the Client directory above seemed to be corrupt; removing it seemed to do the trick.

Restarting the Agent from the command line: /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/k ickstart -restart -agent

Hope this helps!

Jonathan

Reply