Thursday 21 July 2011

ARD - Apple Remote Desktop - Authentication Problem Adding computers to list

I've had a problem with ARD for a long time now and only within the last few weeks found out a work around.

When trying to add new machines to my lists in ARD from the "Scanner", the authentication window pops up for less then 1 second and then disappears! The machine doesn't get added to any list. The same occurs if you try to do anything on an unauthenticated computer (i.e. not in a list) including; view the screen, control the screen, send unix commands etc... I have OS X 10.6.6, but I've had this problem also on 10.5.8, ARD 3, but this problem might have been present in ARD 2 also (it's been a while). I also have a 10.4.11 server running as a Task Server.

Things I tried.

  • I thought it might be a problem with the ARD client so I reinstalled and updated, restarted the service.
  • It might be a problem at my end. So I've reinstalled ARD, although I've not been brave enough to delete all my plist files and preferences. I could have also tried logging in as another user and adding the machine, this would have ruled out my preferences.
I finally just tried adding a machine manually (in the bottom left corner + sign of a computer list), all you need is the IP address and authentication details (username and password) and it worked perfectly.

Note (26-07-2012): Well, I finally figured it out (a year later). Turns out it's a conflict with IP addresses. We use DHCP addressing here, and if an IP address hasn't been used in a while it'll get given to another computer. I've replaced a few old ones and a couple had taken the IP addresses of the older macs. When I tried adding them it would notice another one in its' list with that IP address and not know what to do.

To fix, simply find the computer with the same IP address in the master list, right click and get info. Delete the IP address (as it obviously isn't that anymore), and adding the new machine will work perfectly.

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