I've spent a bit of time trying to sort out what works and what doesn't regarding Apple's Remote Desktop Client software (bundled with Mac OS X) and various VNC clients.
I was a bit frustrated not to find much accurate information on it so I thought I'd post here though I haven't in a decade or more just to record my thoughts where Google can find them. First of all, James notes that RFB 003.889 is not a legal protocol version. True enough. I can't find documentation on it anywhere; posted to the Apple list asking for specs. However, James also tells someone that 'Chicken of the VNC' is irrelevant because it's a client and people are asking about the server. However, for whatever reason, more people report success connecting from various versions of Chicken to Apple's RDC implementation than any other setup. Now, for me the big stumbling block was errors like: ReadFromRFBServer: rdr::EndOfStream (vncviewer 3.3.7 on linux) or no matching security types (vncviewer 4.0b4 from fink) or unrecognized authType 30 (chicken on the mac) Now, all of these are because of a very un-mac-like behaviour: when you change the preferences of the Apple Remote Desktop, you have to stop and restart the server for the changes to take effect. So these messages are the result of connecting to RDC without VNC being properly enabled on the server side. If you stop and restart the server, authentication does in fact proceed. Then you might get: main: unknown message type (vncviewer 4.0b4 from fink) I didn't solve this one. Some hints indicated that you had to run chicken, or had to run tight vnc, or what have you. I found that vncviewer 3.3.7worked (slowly), and that TightVNC, UltraVNC, and RealVNC 4.1.2 from windows all worked, as well as osx2x to just control the mouse and keyboard of the Mac. So in summary the missing magic seems to be to stop and restart the server after making configuration changes. I also have OSXvnc and it works and was easier to configure, but your mother might not have it, while she definitely has the Apple RDC that comes pre-installed. Do yourself a favour and send her an automator script to correctly set the setting and restart it... The bottom line is that I think those for whom it works either rebooted their macs or "knew" to restart the server; while those for whom it doesn't worked get sidetracked with the strange protocol version number and fail to realize that stopping and restarting RDC helps. alex _______________________________________________ VNC-List mailing list [email protected] To remove yourself from the list visit: http://www.realvnc.com/mailman/listinfo/vnc-list
