How Cam I Reboot a Remote Mac

There's obviously a whole lot more to it. I'm not very Unix savvy, so was hoping someone could spell it out in a more detailed way. Here's some elements to the solution. Note the areas with details needed:

1) On the remote Mac, turn on Remote Login on Sharing tab of System Preferences.
2) On router at remote site, set router to port forward the following ports/protocols: [DETAILS NEEDED]
3) Open Terminal on local Mac/ARD management console, and login to remote Mac using ssh [DETAILS NEEDED]
4) Once logged in at remote Mac Terminal session, enter following command to force a restart: sudo reboot
or
sudo shutdown -r now

Turns out there's a thread that describes the root cause of why my Mac Mini kept going off-line here. Bottom line is either a flaky ethernet adapter or Mac OS X that doesn't throttle back the ethernet speed to match cable and switch capabilities. I manually changed the Mac Mini's ethernet speed to 100baseTX (down from Automatically=1000baseT), and my Mac Mini has been up and running/available via ARD for several days.

Another solution is to buy a $29 USB to Ethernet adapter and use it instead of the hard-wired ethernet port. I believe the USB to Ethernet adapter maxes out at 100baseTX, so there's no increase in speed over my manual override, but if the ethernet port on the Mac Mini dies entirely, this would be a less expensive option than replacing the motherboard (ethernet port on Mac Mini is soldered onto motherboard).

Will ship my Mac Mini back to the remote location next week, and see how it goes. Nice to get to the bottom of things, but not happy that this issue (bad ethernet port) has been lurking around the Mini for several years, and I'm not able to get Gigabit speeds.

The link I posted above wasn't working initially. Here's the URL:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6335353&#6335353

Message was edited by: William W. Higgins Jr.

Dave-

Thanks for your reply. Your solution seems to work, but (here's the hard part) I've not been able to reproduce the original condition where the remote Mac was not responding properly to ARD commands. When the Mac on the remote network became unresponsive, my first try was to choose Restart... from the Manage menu in ARD (Result: Task fails). I was looking for a Unix workaround to try next.

Tony's solution seems promising, but again, I've been unable to reproduce the original condition where the remote Mac was not responding to ARD commands.

I've tried both Tony's and your solutions on a Mac that is responsive to ARD commands. Both work, but are a bit unnecessary when the Mac is responding properly to ARD (i.e., it's easier to just use the ARD restart command directly).

IF only the darn Mac would become unresponsive again I could test Tony's solution properly!

I'll post back when it does.

Mac on remote network became unresponsive in ARD (Current Status shown as "Offline" actually), but turns out that the remote Mac was powered off.

Obviously, no command is going to work in that instance. I'd like to explore how the Mac became powered off. Is there a log somewhere that says why a Mac shut down? Several potential ways a Mac can get shut down:

1) User choses Shutdown... from Apple menu;
2) Somebody presses and holds power button on computer enclosure;
3) Loss of power;
4) Other.

Knowing which of these occurred would be helpful. Is there a log that identifies how Mac came to be powered off?

Thanks Tony.

Could not "rewind the log" quickly enough. Thousands of messages reading:

The Date 2:52:25 AM sandbox[29178] sshd(30933) deny-mach-per-user-lookup

Roughly 4 or 5 per minute, going on for days on end. Not sure what this is, but guessing it's BAD. Literally could not scroll the log back far enough to my last unexpected shutdown (less than a week ago). Any idea what this is indicating?

Thanks Tony.

I shut down the ssh service on the firewall. Expect that will solve the ssh attack on the remote Mac, but will check over the next several days to make sure.

Still looking for a way to reboot a remote Mac when ARD isn't responding. Any ideas?

Remote Mac was going "offline" (as reported by ARD) way too regularly. Kept thinking it had "hung" or crashed. Wanted to reboot the remote Mac without human intervention on the other end (several time zones away). That was the impetus behind my original post.

In the latest "hang" or "crash," I had someone reboot the remote Mac by hand. Press/hold the power button until shutdown, wait a minute, then press the power button momentarily to restart. Only this time, the remote Mac never came back online (or "available" as reported by ARD; kept reporting the remote Mac as "offline" instead). Began to suspect a hardware problem or worse (infection/etc.). Had the unit shipped back to me.

The "remote" Mac booted headless on my local network without a problem, but then went "offline" (as reported by ARD) within 10 minutes. Hooked up a keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Mac still boots normally, but the Network pane of System Preferences indicates that the ethernet cable is unplugged. It isn't.

99.9% sure this is a hardware issue now, specifically a bad ethernet port.

Off to the Apple Store I go for repairs.

Thanks again Tony for all the suggestions.

Mac Mini running Mac OS X V10.6.5.