Screensharing authentication problem and weird solution

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Level 1

92 points

Screensharing authentication problem and weird solution

OK, I've been having the Screensharing authentication problem that crops up regularly on this forum. Accidentally I found a very weird solution. I want to know what's going on and to let others know of the solution.

Let's say my laptop account is called 'london' and I want to connect it to my tower account called 'paris' on the LAN. I browsed the network for the tower, click 'connect as' and in the dialog box I put in "Name: paris" and "Password: xxx". I click 'connect' and I am connected as the registered user 'paris' and I can browse all of the disks. File sharing is thus working normally.

Now I click the 'share screen...' button and I get another dialog box into which I once more type "Name: paris" and "Password: xxx". This yields an authentication failure message, which many users will be familiar with.

By accident instead of typing the name and password for the account on the distant machine, I typed into the dialog box the name and password of the local machine: ie. "Name: london" and "Password: yyy". Much to my amazement the screensharing works. What is going on?

Posted on Dec 15, 2011 2:10 AM

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Answer 1

hinder90

Level 1

63 points

Dec 27, 2011 9:29 AM in response to oxcart

Is your username the same on both London and Paris? I have the same username and the approach you suggest (as bizarre as it is) doesn't work for me, sadly.

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Answer 2

oxcart Author

Level 1

92 points

Dec 27, 2011 9:48 AM in response to hinder90

No, the username on london is london and on the machine paris it is paris. However, the passwords are different.

Just to be clear, I first connect to the remote machine's file sharing using the remote machine's username and password (ie. in the normal fashion). I then connect screensharing but give the local machine's username and password in the dialog box.

Before I made this discovery I had created a couple of fresh accounts on the remote machine. One was glitched, while the other functioned properly (ie. screensharing required the remote machine's username and password). The bizarre fix worked for my original account. I have not tested it on the new accounts for fear of screwing things up again.

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Answer 3

hinder90

Level 1

63 points

Dec 27, 2011 10:44 AM in response to oxcart

Does the local machine's username that you can get screen sharing to work specifically allowed to do so on the remote machine or is it not specified?

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Answer 4

oxcart Author

Level 1

92 points

Dec 27, 2011 11:01 AM in response to hinder90

Sorry about that... I accidentally marked your question as the correct answer!

On the remote machine, under the 'sharing' pane of the system preferences, I have ticked the boxes to allow file sharing and screensharing. Remote login is also ticked, but I dont think this is relevant, but worth a try if your's is not.

On the "Allow access for:" section of the pane I have "all users".

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Answer 5

hinder90

Level 1

63 points

Dec 27, 2011 3:24 PM in response to oxcart

So the user "london" does not exist on the host "paris" at all then?

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Answer 6

hinder90

Level 1

63 points

Dec 27, 2011 3:35 PM in response to oxcart

Man, when I tried to connect to the other host using a different user a now the connect screen hangs trying to connect. Sheesh! I think it is time to call AppleCare on this one...

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Answer 7

Jun 19, 2012 3:27 PM in response to oxcart

Screensharing authentication has been an off-and-on problem for me with Tiger, Leopard, and SL. I see the same results many here do in which file sharing works fine but scren sharing keeps getting the "Failed Authentication" dialog. Sometimes I can Screen Share in one direction on my LAN and not in the other.

The above suggestion worked for me. Instead of signing in with the local computer user name and the password that is set in the Screen Sharing System Prefs on the other machine, I signed in using the local compuer User and the Admin password for this machine. And suddenly I am connected. I can't imagine how one would guess that the password required was not the "Sharing" password, but was the local Admin password!

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