system server not working - old daemon?

I have been at this for hours and am at my wits end.
I had an old (think Ver 2.?) vine server running on a distant machine (Grandmothers)
I replaced this with help from someone at the computer with the new Vine Server 3, by dragging the app to the Applications folder and overwriting the older version.

I’ve since been able to connect using CotVNC but it seems only with display 0 and only if the desktop server is running. Any changes I made with the system server just didn’t work! For example, if I set the system server to a different display name and say, display 2 (5902) i just could not connect this way, CotVNC would spiral and crash.
I would have no problem running desktop server and connecting via display 0.

If someone is using another the admin account, with Fast Switching, I can VNC into the standard account “underneath”, but if I had two desktop servers running in each account, there was no way i could VNC into a particular account. It seemed completely random which one it chose.

Does the system server allow you to choose which account to log into? what if one or both are not currently logged in? How do I choose if the computer is sitting at login screen?

Just now I sshed into the user account and killed the process OSXvnc-server (which I suspect is hanging around from the old version!!??) and instantly my CotVNC connections dropped.

Can someone tell me if I am right in suspecting that the old daemon is hanging around and making my life extremely difficult? if so, what is the correct daemon (for v3) and what can I do to stop the old daemon from running everytime I boot? (since it’s obviously survived many reboots while I’m changing the NEW system server settings in vain!)

Basically, I want to be able to decide VNC to admin account or standard account, while those accounts are not necessarily logged in, depending on what I need to do. It seems to me that system server is the way to go, but it’s just not giving me any love right now!

Thanks in advance!

Does the system server allow you to choose which account to log into? what if one or both are not currently logged in? How do I choose if the computer is sitting at login screen?

The System Server will give you access to the “primary display”, that will be whoever is logged on directly OR the login screen if nobody is logged in yet.
The only way to get to a user not currently logged with Vine is to use the System Server to access the login window (via logout or Fast-User-Switching) and log them in (this WILL impact a user sitting at the computer). As you have seen, once you have done THAT you can start a desktop server and then access that account anytime by connecting to their desktop server.

Can someone tell me if I am right in suspecting that the old daemon is hanging around and making my life extremely difficult? if so, what is the correct daemon (for v3) and what can I do to stop the old daemon from running everytime I boot?

Even version 3 still uses the daemon named OSXvnc-server so it may or may not be an old one you are seeing. The OLD daemon runs from /Library/StartupItems/ if there is an OSXvnc or Vine folder in there then you should remove the folder and reboot. The new server runs using launchd and is found in /Library/ApplicationSupport/Vine.

Hope that helps.