Remote Clients do not Authenticate

Question

Remote Clients do not Authenticate

Recently my ARD 3.7.2 has stated behaving strangely. Upon opening, clients show they are Authorizing and then they go to Offline. But, I know these clients are online because I can select the "Offline" client and choose either Control or Observe and I am able to access the client. However, even after establishing a connection to these clients, they still refuse to authorize for chat sessions or file transfers.

Any idea what the issue could be, and what I can do to fix it?

Posted on Apr 13, 2014 1:17 PM

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Answer 1

varjak paw

Level 10

170,206 points

Apr 14, 2014 10:32 AM in response to EK Productions

A long shot, but do a port scan of a client and make sure that port 3283 is still open. If something changed in a router or firewall that now blocks that port, Observe/Control would still work (that uses port 5900) but other functions will fail.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Apr 14, 2014 2:53 PM in response to varjak paw

A port scan shows the port (3284) to be closed, but the port scan also says 5901 is closed when I am connected through that port to control the screen, so something strange is going on.

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Answer 3

varjak paw

Level 10

170,206 points

Apr 14, 2014 3:08 PM in response to EK Productions

ARD uses 3283 and 5900 by default, not 3284 and 5901, Are you doing some special port forwarding so as to use other ports?

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Answer 4

Apr 14, 2014 3:15 PM in response to varjak paw

There are multiple machines (2) behind a single public IP that are being controlled, so the machines have static public IPs with the public ports forwarding to the appropriate 3283, 5900 private ports. Up until apporximately 2 weeks ago everything had worked fine for around 2 years.

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Answer 5

varjak paw

Level 10

170,206 points

Apr 15, 2014 6:17 AM in response to EK Productions

Sounds to me like a problem in the router doing the forwarding, then. If you can get behind the router and onto the local network and try ARD, that would tell you if it is indeed a router problem or a problem with ARD itself.

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Answer 6

Apr 15, 2014 8:58 AM in response to varjak paw

It apparently was an issue on my end because I deleted ARD and reinstalled, and the computer statuses now update correctly. However, now, everytime I close ARD I lose my computer list and have to agree to the license agreement, set my password, and reenter the computer list from scratch each time I open the software.

This is a "com.apple.[something]" preference file issue, isn't it? How would I go about making it save my computer list again?

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Answer 7

varjak paw

Level 10

170,206 points

Apr 15, 2014 9:46 AM in response to EK Productions

Are you logged into your Mac using a user account that has administrator privileges? If not, then it will exhibit the symptoms you experience. Otherwise, a corrupted preference file would seem likely, perhaps this one:

/Users/.../Library/Containers/com.apple.RemoteDesktop/Data/Library/Preferences/c om.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist

Regards.

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Answer 8

Apr 15, 2014 9:50 AM in response to varjak paw

Yes I have administrator priviliges, and that file does not even appear to exist in the folder.

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Answer 9

varjak paw

Level 10

170,206 points

Apr 15, 2014 10:37 AM in response to EK Productions

Sorry, don't know what to tell you. It exists on my system. Try a search for "remotedesktop" using a search tool such as EasyFind that can show system and hidden files more comprehensively. That should turn up all the relevant pref files.

Regards.

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