Connection issues with viewer

Hi,

I’m running the trial version of Vine Viewer. I like the feature set and would like to purchase a copy, but I’m having some issues (mostly with it making connections to my other computers) that I find annoying enough to want to get some resolution to before I purchase.

First, a bit about my setup. I’m running the viewer on a quad-core Intel Mac Pro with Mac OS X 10.4.9. I’m connecting to a Power Mac G4 AGP (Sawtooth), an iMac DV (500 MHz), and a PowerBook G4 12" (1.33 GHz), all running 10.4.9, over a 100BASE-T wired network. I’ve installed the most recent version of Vine Server on the three target machines, and the most recent client on my Mac Pro. I have the iMac and PM servers configured to answer incoming requests directly, and the PB to answer requests only over SSH.

My first problem is with the Connection List window. When I first launch the viewer, it shows everything with the correct state, just as expected. However, it never seems to update after that, except when I explicitly try to connect to a server and the result changes that server’s state. Even a Rendezvous server coming on-line doesn’t cause it to change. I’ve tried to select Check Availability, both on a particular item and by clicking in an empty part of the list, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. I believe the interval for auto-updating is set to 10 seconds, but at the moment, the Preferences command isn’t working (a first, but…).

(As an aside, are Bonjour servers tied into the update settings? Since they broadcast themselves, I’d expect them to always appear immediately when they become available.)

The next issue is with the connections themselves, and this is by far the most annoying issue. I haven’t had time to figure out the pattern yet, but very frequently, the viewer will stop making connections with the servers. With the SSH-required PB, it’ll say the connection was refused and give me the following error (copied from console.log):

Vine Viewer[2187] Connection failed:
*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value

With the other servers, it simply refuses to connect. Either way, I can connect with no problem with Chicken of the VNC (after setting up an SSH tunnel for the PB, of course), and Vine also connects just fine if I restart it.

Also, while connected to the PB, I keep getting this message in the log:

Vine Viewer[2514] SSH Connect: Local Port 5950, is in use, trying another

Sometimes, it’s this version:

SSH Connect: Local Port 5950, is in use, trying another
<CFData>{length = 6, capacity = 6, bytes = 0x0017f208be7e}

It just keeps logging one or the other message (usually the first) to the console roughly every 30 seconds, though nothing visible is happening in the client and it seems to be maintaining the connection just fine.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated, as the Viewer looks like a great client - if I can get it to work!

We have a new version of Vine Viewer coming out real soon now, and I believe most if not all the issues that you are encountering are dealt with in the new release.

Bonjour service servers coming online are updated automatically when they are broadcast and Vine Viewer receives the messages. As for attempting to connect too many times, and being locked out, that is an issue with reliable connections and also the Vine Server configuration file (which is addressed in a nice summary post in the Redstone User Forums). The ObjC runtime error message is something our developers will be taking a look at, and may already be fixed as I’m writing this response.

We hope you enjoy the current and new version (coming RSN, promise) of Vine Viewer.

That’s what I figured. If I wasn’t clear in my first post, this isn’t happening for me now. Currently, they show up when I first launch the client, but don’t automatically update after that.

As for attempting to connect too many times, and being locked out, that is an issue with reliable connections and also the Vine Server configuration file (which is addressed in a nice summary post in the Redstone User Forums).

Is that the issue I’m running into? I’m not getting a message about connecting too many times - just a connection refused message. And when this is happening, CotVNC logs in without incident, which seems to indicate a problem on the client end, not the server end. Although, now that I think about it, I almost never can reconnect after the client unexpectedly loses a connection (like if the server computer goes to sleep), so maybe this is related.

I tried to find the post you mentioned to get more details, but I didn’t have any luck. Can you please provide a direct link?

The bug with missing Rendezvous servers is fixed for the next version.

As is the problem with connections getting “unable to connect” after a dropped connection - the current work around for that is just to relaunch Viewer.

The new version of Vine Viewer is very close now and we might offer a public beta (which will still require a key).

Does Redstone offer any way to be automatically notified when new versions of Vine Viewer are released? An RSS feed, mailing list, automatic emails, anything? I’m a licensed owner eagerly awaiting the ability to alphabetize the Connection list, hate having to hunt through the forums every week to see if it’s been released.

In order to get notification when the next version of Vine Viewer is released you can register to “Watch this topic for replies” link on the official Announcement Topic. You can also just follow these steps:
[list]Create a log-in on our User Forums.
Click here - Watch the Announcement Topic[/list:u]
For sorting the connection list just click on the Name column at the top of the list (I see that has an issue with being a case-sensitive sort, we’ll improve that for the next version).