Multiple Desktop Sessions on Mac OS X Tiger locks up head

I’m running two sessions (vine in both sessions, with the default remote admin of Tiger turned off).

This works great. Except …

Sometimes, if the screensaver is running on the session that is being displayed, when I connect to it via my Suse 10.2 Remote Desktop client, it locks up the GUI of the session being displayed. Any animation of the screen saver stops, and I can’t figure out a way to make the GUI come back without restarting the server.

I have each session set to a specific port (0 for the displaying one and 1 for the hidden one). I have the firewall opened for all VNC ports. Neither session is an admin user.

Note that when this happens, the client still sees the GUI from the server, but it is just non-responsive. No types or clicks have an effect. The same is true with the physically plugged-in keyboard and mouse. The machine is as good as dead as far as the person sitting in front of it is concerned. Actually, catatonic might be the appropriate description.

However, I can login over SSH as either user, and I can still VNC into the vine server running in the non-displayed session with no problem. (I have the screen saver disabled in that one, anyway.)

So, what I do when this happens is to vnc into the session that is not displaying and restart the system from the Apple menu. Of course, the OS complains and makes me login as a gawd.

Effectively, this “feature” completely cripples my machine. :frowning:

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Alien wrote:

The same is true with the physically plugged-in keyboard and mouse.

I don’t think this is a VNC specific problem, I think it’s basically a Mac OS X problem where the machine is thrashing on the screen saver. I’ve had it happen to me when NOT running VNC servers but when the machine is extremely “dogged” and the screen saver kicks in. I typically ssh in and force quit the screen saver to get everything working again. I would recommend a less intensive screen saver or just go with the display dimming.
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