(Solved) How to fix VNC ARD screen sharing in Lion

The Craw is right, you have two computers behind 1 router sharing a single public IP. At a minimum you would need to setup port forwarding on your router. But with Apple VNC I dont think it lets you customise the incoming port, so you will only be able to forward the VNC port to one machine.

Connect to server works on external networks - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070226135647141

Yours is a networking problem. Try MobileMe's Back to My Mac, or something like Logmein/Teamviewer.

Not much else you can do

Still see a problem, I can't figure out how if you put the internet ip in how it will be able to route through to the proper machine at the other end without ports being forwarded. Also the same ports are always used so you would have them routed to one machine or the other. Not automatic.

If Ichat does that part that you need why don't you set up a private share with like dropbox to ID's on each of the machines ( http://db.tt/nk8pBDdP ) and use that as a way to share the files that you need and Ichat for the other.

Not perfect but will probably save you a ton of time.

Good Luck

Awesome, thanks. My share preference dissapeared, got that back with copy of another macs share preference folder; then I couldn't VNC in...but off and on helped. Also, the VNC Viewer I am using from Win7 is Ultra VNC with no issues (besides their installer failing to pull down dependencies / addons).

Thanks for the suggestions, but I already had forwarded all the necessary ports. According to many tutorials I have found, they all pretty much state the same thing; if you forward all the necessary ports, and utilize the external IP address from another computer, even if you are traveling, it works. Well, in my case it doesn't. I believe it may be that my modem/router which is a 2Wire 2701 model, doesn't support UPnP. But, opening/forwarding the ports Apple states, should make it work. Well, I rather not continue this task because it is just taking too much time. iChat is fine as long as someone is on the other end to accept screen share. But to be able to access my own computer when I am traveling, it doesn't seem possible with the set-ups available.

Thanks again. May you all have a blessed and beautiful Christmas. Jesus Loves You All!

Unfortunately this didn't work for me. The loginwindow console was still frozen and unresponsive whenever I tried to log in via Screen Sharing.

There still seems to be a glaring bug within Lion 10.7.2 Remote Management.

There was also another tip to put the screen to sleep by running `pmset sleepnow` while sshed in, but that also did not work for me.

The only thing that worked was to either

1. Disable Fast User Switching

or

2. killing the loginwindow console process while sshed in.

run the following command to get the process id (pid):

ps auxwww | grep 'loginwindow console'

then run:

sudo kill -9 pid

where pid is the # of the process id

Hello,

I have been able to use VNC with Lion by (a) doing the ARD reboot trick at the top of this thread and (b) using a VNC client that allows for Mac authentication rather than VNC authentication. Namely, iTeleport for the iPhone/iPod Touch and Jolly's Fast VNC for Mac.

Ben

I am using the VNC Viewer iOS app and the ARD refresh did not work for me.

I've been fiddling with this for a few weeks and just found this article, which did the trick.

http://www.realvnc.com/company/press/news/lion-information.html

From the article: "... you no longer need to specify a separate VNC password. Turn it off by opening System Preferences > Sharing > Screen Sharing, clicking the Computer Settings button, and turning off VNC Viewers may control screen with password. You must then restart Screen Sharing (turn it off and back on again)."

Hope this helps some people in a similar situation.

- BH

You are a god-send. Nearly saved my marriage. Thank you! Hubby has been on the rampage to use IPAD to remote control headless Mac Mini mid2011 i5 w/Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 since purchased 3 days ago.

Apple mall shop tried for hours to get LogMeIn to work - nope.. Worked on everything in the store except Mac Mini 2011. I was up until 4am yesterday searching for options/software/discussions. Found your post but too tired and woke up husband next to me to go to bed to sleep. He woke up and said "Is it fixed?"

Just followed your excellent instructions and it worked! I should name one of my children after you.

Saint Mac, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Since I upgraded to Lion, screensharing didn't work any more. All methods and tips I found here and in the internet did not work untill this one here: reset PRAM (some settings the Mac stores to have them accessible quicker)

- Turn Mac off

- Turn Mac on while holding down R, P, alt and cmd untill startup sound can be heard twice.

Since then it works like it did under Snow Leopard.

the methode described above worked on one iMac, but not on the other. Still no real universal slution...

Here is what solved my problem. I had a fresh install of Lion server 10.7.3 on my Mac mini. Screen sharing was turned on but wouldn't work. The only thing that did it for me was adding a new service on the machine's firewall for VNC port 5900 TCP, and enabling it for some users. It is a bit strange that the new install did not have this service open on the firewall, and even stranger that I couldn't see the blocks in the firewall logs.

Hope this helps.

@guillame: wait until tomorrow or some restarts of both machines. It worked that way for me too, but the next day it did not work for me any more.

@ all: the only way to get a usable screen sharing was to replace the ARDAgent with the one from the last update, 3.4., on all Macs. Instruciton see the third post here, from Reubania at 30th July 2011, 08:56 AM

http://www.mactalk.com.au/11/102585-os-x-lion-screen-sharing.html

I hope, Apple fixes this soon.

Regards

Philipp

Here's how I solved the problem on my Mac mini with shared screen under 10.7.3:

• go to Systems Preferences > Security and confidentiality > Firewall
• click on Advanced
• set screensharingd to Allow all incoming connections
• reboot the Mac mini (or the Mac with shared screen)

The firewall was blocking the connections for screensharingd daemon port 5900.

I hope that helps!

Sweet Lord, thank you! I'm so ****** with Lion at this point. I can't tell you how long I've been trying to connect via ScreenSharing form my SL iMac to my Lion Macbook. Your instructions were concise and worked immediately. Thank you very much! Apple, I love your products, but get your s#$t together with simple features working across platforms!

Adding the rule for port 5900 TCP worked well after 4 days and several boots. It may be that Apple just forgot to add it to the firewall when "enable screen sharing..." is selected. I guess this is after the upgrade to 10.7.3.