ARD 3.2.2 - Current Status - Screen Sharing Available

Question

Hello,
like several other users i do have a problem with some of our mac client computers in ARD 3.2.2
Usually those Macs do display a Current Status in ARD like:
Idle (time)
or
Available
which we would call an expected state.
Unfortunally some macs tend to show another status:
"Screen Sharing Available".
This other status results in: a working screen sharing in ARD
BUT other tasks like i.e. UNIX Commands send from ARD to this hosts just dont work as ARD end in the following error message:
The Remote Desktop Client software is not active on HOSTNAME
So as a quick test i ssh'ed into 2 macs, one of those was affected by the problem. Comparing the output of
ls -la | grep Remote
and the result is totally same.
So both macs showed me:
AppleVNServer
ARDHelper
ARDAgent
Then i checked the firewalls on those macs and each firewall has the default ports 5900 & 3283.
The only problem here is that i cant define UDP or TCP on 10.3.9 Macs.
The macs do run Mac OS X versions from 10.3.9 up to 10.5.6
Sometimes a simple reboot fixes the "Screen Sharing Available" issue.
Right now i am wondering how to fix this issue as some threads do suggest re-checking firewall settings ( which i did ) others suggest using a local administrator insteed of the admins name in Sharing.
Right now none of those hints worked for me and i am wondering if this is a known bug and if there is a known solution.
any help is appreciated
Best regards
fidel

Answer 1

I have been experiencing the same problem now for months -- various Macs on my network that I control/administer with ARD 3.2.2 intermittently displaying a status of "Screen Sharing Available".
After reading through this thread, I started poking around in System Preferences on my client Mac (from which I control/administer the others), and I appear to have fixed my problem! I have no idea if this will help anyone else, but here's what I did:
In the "Security" preference pane of "System Preferences", I clicked on the "Firewall" tab. The ensuing window contains a list of applications, each followed by a pop-up menu containing two options: "Block incoming connections" and "Allow incoming connections"
Sure enough, "ARDAgent" was in the list of apps and sure enough, it's setting was "Block incoming connections". I changed this setting to "Allow incoming connections", switched back Apple Remote Desktop, and hit Command-Y to refresh the listing of ARD computers on my network (I did not even quit and re-launch ARD). The list was immediately updated, and ALL of ones that had been showing "Screen Sharing Available" in the "Current Status" column switched to "Available" or "Idle (time)" and their icons switched from pale blue to the normal, darker blue.
Problem solved (at least for now)! Will report back any changes/updates.
Additional information, for those that are interested:
I have 12 Macs on my office LAN that I control remotely from the iMac on my desk (same office, same subnet). All are running ARD 3.2.2.
The iMac on my desk is currently running Mac OS X 10.5.6. It is a first-get Intel iMac.
The 12 Macs on the network are running various versions of OS X from 10.3.9 to 10.5.6. All but one are older PPC Macs; one is a newer, aluminum Intel iMac. As of this morning, all three that are running Leopard were working correctly with ARD, while the results were mixed with the others running both Tiger and Panther. From this, I can only conclude the OS version on the various server Macs makes no difference with regard to this problem, although it MAY be that those running Leopard are immune. I cannot be sure of that, however.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Message was edited by: Richard Neil for clarification