Vine Erractic on Mac

chrisgreen

I am having limited success running the Vine Server/Viewer 3.0 combo on my Macs, and I am running out of patience. I am using the Viewer on my MacBook Pro OS 10.4.11. I have a server at home, and a server at work both running Vine Server. Both servers are older G4's running 10.4.11.

My goal is to use connect via SSH both locally and remotely to both machines at different times. I have had success all around, but I have also experienced a LOT of trouble where connections are not possible. Both machines are sitting behind routers, and I've spent a great deal of time fooling around with various firewall settings here and there, etc.

The bottom line, though, is that every time I get the connection to work, it invariably stops working after a period of minutes or hours in every scenario, and I waste another chunk of time trying to figure out why. What is going on?

JonathanOSX

Based on what you describe my guess would be that since both machines are behind routers they are getting a Dynamic IP (DHCP) from the router. While this will stay the same if the machines and the router stay on if you reboot your router (or have a power outage) then the machines can come back and get a different IP address.
Possible solutions:

• Some newer routers will assign the same IP based on Client ID.
• Assign a static IP to the machines that are port forwarded to
• Put your routers on small UPC power strips so they don't lose their IP records when the power goes out
• Increase the DHCP lease time (this will only help sometimes)[/list:u]

chrisgreen

Jonathan,

Thank you for the reply...

1. I already have both routers set up to assign the same IP to each computer each time it connects.

2. My work server has a static IP from our ISP, the other has had the same IP for a couple of years now from my own ISP, and I check it pretty much every day. I would notice if it changed.

3. Both routers and servers are already on UPC's.

4. I can look into the DHCP lease time, but that seems like low probability for a solution.

Here's an example. I am at work. I connect with Vine locally to the server on the same LAN. An hour later, the connection fails, and I am unable to reestablish it. Could switching the user environment on my Viewing Mac cause any trouble like this?

cg

JonathanOSX

If, by "Switching the User Environment" you mean Fast User Switching or running programs that change the resolution then yes -- those can require that Vine restart. It's usually good about restarting; check you Vine Server log files and see if the server has shut down or if another network problem is to blame.

chrisgreen

OK, I seem to have this issue resolved. There were two separate issues at work on these two machines. One issue involved Fast User Switching, and some kind of resolution issue that I was seeing reported in the console log. It seems inconsistent. Sometimes the connection is broken, sometimes not. Sometimes after the connection is broken the Vine Server and/or Viewer needs a restart, sometimes not. Mostly, though, this issue hasn't been a big deal.

The other machine turned out to be some kind of SSH login issue that was being reported in the console log, but not the Vine Server log. A restart of the computer has solved this issue.

Thank you for the support.

Chris