MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 5,1, Sonoma and OCLP - screen sharing/remote management

[typonaut]

I have a Mac Pro 5,1, it is running Sonoma (14.7.1) via OCLP - the latest version released in the last few days (2.2.0).

A few days ago I had remote management "working", in that I could see the screen, but it was virtually unuseable because there was a significant lag. Also, the WiFi card could not be seen by the system.

So, I updated to 2.2.0 and completed the root patches. Now I can see the WiFi card, and that connects to networks ok.

However, the Remote Management/Screen Sharing now just shows a black screen. I have tried this from various Macs, either running Apprle Remote Desktop or connecting via "Share screen", and get the same result – a black screen with a pointer moving around.

Just for fun I thought I’d try creating a new folder in the Finder, doing so "blind" – cmd-shift-H, cmd-shift-N, "Hello World", "return". Then I SSH to the Mac, and indeed I have created a new folder in the user folder.

I am concluding that it is some kind of video problem, but no idea how to fix. I have found lots of older messages about Sonoma and screen sharing – mostly seeming to have a similar issue, but that was fixed in 14.2.x. I have tried a few commands I have found via SSH, but these don't achieve anything.

I have also tried turning off Remote Management and just using Screen Sharing – but that does not cure the issue. Additionally I have tried enabling connections for all users, or only selected users, and that does not help.

I have seen some people reference "Select screen sharing type" either "Standard" or "High performance" – but I have not seen this dialogue box anywhere.

It isn't a hardware problem, because I boot the same machine into Mojave and it works perfectly with Remote Management.

Anyone know how to fix this?

 

[paalb]

Not seen this, so just some thoughts. Have you tried turning off Network>Firewall on both macs? When you look at it from Remote Desktop, does it have the latest ARD version (3.9.8 I belive)?

 

[typonaut]

After some further faffing about I managed to get it working, so some degree.

Firstly I swapped in a drive I knew had an older version of OCLP, and had not had the root patches applied. This resulted, as I had previously experienced, in a pretty much unuseable Remote menagement session – due to time lag (generally 6-8 seconds, but up to 20 seconds).

The time lag issue is a bit weird in itself, because I made sure the clocks were synched with the same time server, and they displayed the same time, with aabout a second difference between them. How that translates into such a long delay in the interaction is baffling.

I thought I would then try moving the remote Mac Pro to a different network position – but there was no screen there, and I didn’t really want to be lugging screens around. So, I unplugged the screen on the Mac Pro in situ, and wanted to make sure I could connect to it via Remote Management if it was running without a screen.

Magic! The Mac Pro defaulted to 1280*1024, and I could reemotely access it as I would normally expect to. I went to Display settings and changed the resolution to 1920*1080 and it immediately went to a black screen again. Fortunately, I seems that you still have (blind) control over the Mac, and I managed to get it back to 1280*1024.

After some further experimentation, including closing and restarting the remote session, I found that the highest resolution I could get it to work at was 1680*1050. No lag, works as expected.

So, somewhere along the line there is some issue with higher resolution. As previously, this isn't a problem with Mojave (on this Mac Pro), just Sonoma.

Just for completeness, to answer @paalb the firewall was inactive, and the ARD version on the Mac Pro is 3.9.8.