Screen sharing redraw problem

I'm still having issues on my headless Mac mini with 10.8.2. I'm going to try a reinstall eventually and see if that fixes it.

Same here. 10.6.8 on macbookpro remoting into brand new mac mini on 10.8.2. Completely unusuable- unless you try draw out the screen with a window. It's fine remoting into 10.7.4 on a Mac Pro & Macbook Air.

Incidently- if I remote in Via iTeleport on my iPhone 4S- I see exactly the same erratic screen redraw errors on both the iphone & remote desktop on the macbookpro. So whatever the 10.8 client is doing wrong- its not due to anything specific on the control side.

Apple- sort this out please. This has evidently been going on months already. It's certainly not fixed in the last update.

Mike

Yup, me too, but I might have stumbled across a functional work-aroud: Turn off scaling.

My Mac Mini (2012, 10.8.2) was exhibiting analogous behavior on a target headless Mini (2007, 10.7.5) - though for me what happened was windows drawing in the lower-right corner of the shared screen, and I couldn't seem to drag them anywhere.

Also, hitting cmd-n to open a new window in the target system's shared screen did nothing. Or at least, nothing visibly changed. The target system is being used as a media server. As such it has a minimal system install.

I set the screen sharing prefs so dynamic scaling was off, and to scroll the screen when the mouse gets to the screen edges in the screen sharing window (see the screenshot for the settings I'm using now). After a reboot of both systems, that seemed to solve the problem.

I was also having redraw problems at first (a black shared screen), but clicking the Dashboard icon in the dock forced a screen-wide redraw.

Hope this helps!

I had the same problem after upgrading to ML 10.8.x

Whenever I connected to my Mac mini using Screen Sharing, I had the black redraw problem.

After many trial an error, I discovered it was related to fact I was using my Mac mini headless.

It seems the GPU video driver isn't loaded when there is no monitor connected and turned on.

I found this solution.

http://blog.macminicolo.net/post/33839671756/build-a-dummy-dongle-for-a-headless -mac-mini

http://www.geeks3d.com/20091230/vga-hack-how-to-make-a-vga-dummy-plug/

It solved the problem for me.

Still I would prefer a software solution to force the use of the GPU.

Claude

Agreed. Solved it for me too. But its only a workaround- as that may not always be practical. Neither should it need third party apps to work. It should be fixed in the OS.

I completely agree with you, glitchrate. Claude-Cmlandry's trick solved my problem too, but isn't a real solution.

Please, GPU fix is urgent.

My best.

Giorgio

I am having the same issues with a MacMini 2009 and have submitted a "feedback" via https://www.apple.com/feedback/ section Mac OS X . Please do the same. Though, I don't expect Apple to ever fix this. At least we should try to let them know.

I bought a mini-display-port to VGA-Adapter (from LogiLink) and built a vga-dummy-dongle as described here http://blog.macminicolo.net/post/33839671756/build-a-dummy-dongle-for-a-headless -mac-mini .

FINALLY: Screen-Sharing is performing as expected!

Once the System thinks there's a display attached (take a look at the Display-Systempreference or the System-Profiler) I can even watch video via Screen-Sharing over WiFi! Without the dongle Screen-Sharing it's just unusable. Well it's sad, but at least I've found a solution. 😐 Mine is a MacMini late 2009.

Install a third party display driver (for example from http://getairdisplay.com) and it works!

You need only the driver (host software from http://getairdisplay.com). This simulating a monitor and the GPU video driver will be load and the problem is fixed.

Hum, after I installed the "host software" and rebooted and adjusted the installed System Preference panel (detailed directions and screenshots are part way down about "ON THE PRIMARY COMPUTER" at http://avatron.com/forums/read.php?47,15501 ) and then rebooted again, things maybe are better on my headless MacMini ML Server, but not completely resolved. When I look at a Youtube video in Firefox for example, the firefox screen does not update unless I move the window.

Any idea what settings need to be set?

Maybe that's just a problem with Firefox, since Safari seems to work much better.

I think the third party display driver don't support hardware acceleration. I have installed only the driver (not activate in control panel) and it help to fix the problem in finder etc. Maybe for videos you need a real monitor.

db from f wrote:

I have installed only the driver (not activate in control panel) and it help to fix the problem in finder etc. Maybe for videos you need a real monitor.

So you ran the installer but have not turned on the AirDisplay control panel? Or did you just extract the driver somehow?

"So you ran the installer but have not turned on the AirDisplay control panel?" - Yes that's all.

The monitor driver loads during system startup. Maybe this is a workaround for: "It seems the GPU video driver isn't loaded when there is no monitor connected and turned on." (see post of cmlanrdy)

It works on my system, also videos, but not in full screen mode.

Tried it. Didn't work. At least the uninstall was easy.