ARD 3.3.2 problem with connecting to 10.5.8 server

Question

Hi,
I am running ARD (3.3.2) on 10.6.2 client trying to Control a 10.5.8 Mac OS X Server system. The All Computers pane Name column shows the SACSI Server-Home, Current Status is Idle, Current Application is Finder, Current User is Server Admin 1, IP Address is correct, and Mac OS Version shows 10.5.8 (9L34), and ARD version 3.3.2.
Both computers are on the same subnet. Client Norton Firewall is disabled. Both firewalls (Mac OS X Server Firewall & Norton Firewall) on server are disabled.
When running other applications on the server, such as Server Preferences, the Current Application column changes to reflect its name.
From Terminal on the client system I can ssh [email protected] (Server IP address)
without a problem.
In ARD when I click on Control icon I get a popup titled Control Computer with a "Connecting to SACSI Server-Home" message and a Stop button. Eventually I get another popup with the message "Connection failed to SACSI Server-Home" with an OK button.
It always fails like this.
Anybody have any idea on how to fix this?

Answer 1

I can agree this behavior! As I have understood it is failing because of some issues with NAT handling lacks still in the software. This is actually very old, serious and large scale problem since basically it doesn't work over any home network configuration.
I have couple use cases where this works over VPN but I would love see it working without. And of course it works in the local network. But not good enough since I mean the purpose of the ARD is to be able to connect from anywhere.
Apple claims that 3.3.2 included some improvements:
+* Improved handling of IP address and port changes for clients accessed behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) system+
I can't still connect to my server from the outside. It says always +Connection failed+ as before the upgrade! ARD probably does use ssh tunneling methods a bit differently because if I do ssh tunneling manually, no problems at all. A bit weird.
This is how to test it. Choose "encrypt passwords and keystrokes only" from security panel of the ARD Admin and create a new connection by address. Address is localhost and remote management port is 7283 and screen sharing 7900.
Then open terminal and type:
+ssh -L 7283:localhost:3283 -L 7900:localhost:5900 [email protected]+
Port forwarding is in the form of -L local-port:host:remote-port. You could put -f to tell ssh to go into the background just before it executes the command. This is followed by the user name and server you are logging into. Sometimes it's also useful to put -N to not execute a command on the remote system.
Until Apple do the fix or some workaround...