Forums | MacLife

Hey nikbot!  I agree with you, but I guess I'm having trouble understanding the entire concept here, and this is making every step very unstable.  I thought I had this right, but when I went to connect to another machine, I was unable to do so, and received an error.  What am I supposed to do with these firewall settings, and what about all those port settings?  What do they mean?  I just want the exact set-ups for both machines.  javascript:insert_text('',%20'');

Ok, i'm going to punt this over to BH for more info.

It depends on what version of the OS you have.  10.4.X has VNC built in BUT Apple hid the VNC server as part of their "Apple Remote Desktop".  If you installed OSXVnc then you should stop that server and disable it's startup item IF AND ONLY IF YOU ARE RUNNING 10.4.x and later.

VNC uses ports 5900 - 5909.

There are two major steps in getting readty to use VNC:
  1) Setting up the server (the machine you want to control). 
  2) Setting up the client (the machine you want to use to control the host)

1) Setting up the server (the machine you want to control):
  a) open "System Preferences"
  b) switch to the "Sharing" panel
  c) Select the "Services" tab
  d) check the "Apple Remte Desktop" service (you may need to authenticate if the lock is closed in the bottom right)
  e) when you click on the test "Apple Remote..." in the list you will see a button appear "Access Privieges..."  Click it.
  f)  Ckeck the box "VNC viewers may control..."
  g) you should alse check users you want to allow control from and any of the other check boxes you think are required for your setup.  You should also set a password for taking control via VNC
  h) now click OK and select the "Firewall" tab
  i) scroll down until you see the VNC entry.  make sure it's checked
  j) switch back to the "Services" tab, select the "Apple Remote Desktop" item and note the IP address for use when trying to connect to the host.

On a client machine you should start the application "Chicken of the VNC" and type in the IP address from step (1j), then type in the password


That should be it.

Wayne

Just wanted to thank you guys a lot.  Would I expect anything less from a bunch of Mac Addicts?  I did just like you said, even though I am still confused about what I actually did, but everything works just fine.  I practiced on my wife tonight from my laptop top our G5 quad.  She got kind of mad at me, because she was busy, and I kept taking over the mouse and moving stuff around.

Again, my main reason for using these methods is to be able to more efficently collect security files from our network clients.  Does anyone know of a better way to do this other than physically walking to each and everyone's computer with a thumb drive and running the command "open /var/log?"

Thanks!

You could always have you machines write the log files to a central place on one of you machines.

AFP= Apple File Protocol

This is how it is easiest to locate and share macintosh computers.  You enable this feature by checking the "Personal File Sharing" box in the panel "System Preferences -> Sharing -> Services"

Sorry, I forgot the name isn't ekplicitly "afp" in the Sharing pane. Mac OS: How to Connect to File Sharing or Apple File Services (AFP)

A side note: Once the remote server is mounted, you way not be able to see invisible files. If you need to acces the /var/log/ in the remote mac, you can use a shortcut cmd-shift-g (Finder menubar > Go > Go te Folder) from finder or an open/save dialog box and type /Volumes/[name of the mounted remote mac]/var/log then press return/enter.

To make it easer, you can type partial name of the folder and press the tab key. It'll append the rest of the folder's name as long as there's no other folder with a similar name. Example: you want to go to /Library/Desktop Pictures/ folder. Type /Lib, press tab, type Desk, press tab again.

Hope this helps.

Last edited by mahakali (2006-10-21 12:32 am)