Redstone is pleased to make available a public Beta for Vine 3.0.
This release includes new versions of Vine Viewer and Vine Server with a host of new features and options.
This release incorporates lots of new functionality and we are seeking assistance from the user community to fully test the new features of Vine. Please post bug reports, suggestions, and observations to this thread.
Highlights:[list][]Full Screen Mode
[]International Keyboard Support
[]Leopard Compatibility Fixes
[]Simplified Server Interface
[]UltraVNC Login Support[/list:u]
Known Issues:[list][]International Interfaces haven’t been converted, BETA is English only
[]Leopard- The Unicode Keyboard requires that you manually add and select that keyboard[/list:u]
Specific Release Notes:[list]Viewer
[]New Full Screen Mode
[]UltraVNC authentication
Interface
[]Added a basic control panel
[]Moved settings to a dedicate Preference Pane.
[]Moved “View Log” and “Reverse Connection” to menus/sheets
[]Added external IP lookup and ability to verify access to your VNC server from detected IPs
[]Always allow a server restart from the UI
[*]Panel to prevent accidentally quitting Vine Server when users are connected
Startup
[]Better IP and DNS resolution so that initial startup is not delayed (as can happen on Leopard)
[]Added LaunchD support for the System Server on 10.4 and 10.5
[]Fixed a Leopard issue with displaying an extra icon
[]Added better versioning (AVS)
VNC Server
[]Added support for Unicode keyboard (10.4+)
[]Added support to detect keyboard type (10.4+)
[]Added support to control where events enter the system (Event Taps) (10.4+)
[]Fixed a bug auto-detecting the proper port when SSH-only was checked.
[]Fixed a lockup problem in the OSXvnc-server process that could occur with Rich Clipboard Support enabled.
[]Fixed a problem repeatedly trying to send an empty clipboard buffer.
[*]Fixed a bug with restoring otherArguments from defaults
[/list:u]
Here is a trial key for Vine Viewer 3.0 Beta:
Key: i7e9-pdjt-lan0-u9m4-oxt4-g
Valid Until: 19-December-2007
My updated Vine Server doesn’t seem to work.
I am using the system server. I can connect fine, but after getting the initial screen, the screen doesn’t refresh. It seems as if it’s stuck on the first screen image.
I tried it from my laptop, looking at the remote (my desktop) and while the image is not refreshing, the cursor is still moving on the remote.
As the viewer I tried, Vine Viewer, the built in “Share Screen”, Apple remote desktop and VNC Viewer on Windows. They all had the same problem with non refreshing screen.
Update :
This only happens after a reboot. If I quit Vine server and restart it, it works fine. If I reboot, the behavior above kicks in.
(To quit it I got to go in Activity Monitor as the app will not start)
PS I am sorry I meant to post this in the Leopard thread… 
Odd – we saw that at one point in our testing but thought we had cleared it up. What configuration options had you specified?
Is there anything atypical about your configuration? 10.5 Server?
I wonder if you are still running the old style System Server. If you have anything in /Library/StartupItems/OSXvnc then please remove it.
No I have a normal 10.5 on a MacPro. Except may be VM Ware is installed but most people do now… StartupItems is empty.
This time again I had to force quit from activity monitor as the app would not start for me too look at the preference to report here…
I think I have all the default set in pref. :
*** Devices
Allow display Dimming, Allow screen saver to start, swap mouse, Unicode keyboard, smart event management
*** Sharing
Advertise via bonjour, let viewers request exclusive access
***Advanced
RFB: Default
*** Startup
Restart server if it stops unexpectedly
Confirmed and Fixed – problem with not being able to launch the same GUI app that is running as the System Server.
Confirmed – Locally able to duplicate the “no refresh” at Login Window. Interestingly if you do login (by hitting Refresh Screen in Vine Viewer a bunch) then the server restarts and THAT one does get screen updates.
I can also confirm the stuck screen at reboot problem. Interesting that my key presses were being passed through even though no screen updates came back. Restarting the server and reconnecting was sent a new screen with the key presses but still frozen. It wasn’t until the login process was complete that a restarted server was then getting proper screen refreshes. I guess the server running from bootup before login is sending the screen updates to the wrong place or blocking still because of the new security in Leopard.
Is it this that is fixed in your later post? Will you post a new Beta with this change in it?
PS My client is COTVNC.
Thanks for all your hard work.
Right – so we have determined that the Unicode Keyboard loading conflicts with the Login Window for the purposes of screen refresh; obviously we’ll get that worked out in short order.
For the current Beta release please make sure that you configure your System Servers to “Use US 101 Keyboards” on the Device Tab of the Vine Server Preferences. Then redo your Start System Server to apply the new preferences.
Might be a dumb question… but what is the difference between the 2 keyboards settings? 
Thanks for the advice about the keyboard setting. That certainly works.
I now get a disconnect from the server as soon as I log in ie as the server switches from the login environment to the user environment, my client loses connection. Reconnecting works fine however.
Best regards,
David
I think this would be a great feature for Vine Viewer users connecting to windows machines.
If you were using a VNC viewer on a PC, you’d have to resort to a menu item (etc) to send Ctrl-Alt-Del to the target machine, because Ctrl-Alt-Del is trapped locally by the host system.
On the Mac, however, ctrl-alt-delete (more specifically ctrl-option-del) has no special significance and can be used to trigger the VNC viewer to send ctrl-alt-del to the target system.
For example, Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection allows you to simply press control-option-del on the keyboard to send a ctrl-alt-del to the target. (Actually, I believe it completely omits the menu item to send this key combination.)
This would be a fantastic add on to Vine Viewer. I would like to think that it would be pretty easy for you to implement a keyboard shortcut for the existing menu item. 
Matt
Thanks for Vine Server, btw. Here are a few requests:
-
a dock or menu bar icon indicating when a client is connected
-
the Port Number placed back on the main screen rather than the Preferences; this is a much too important parameter to be in the prefs, and has to be manipulated by anyone with multiple sessions, using Apple’s Screen Sharing, doing port masquerading, etc.
-
Here’s where I get a let little bold 
I’m not sure how you determine the external (public) IP address, but good job showing that on the GUI. Now, what would be really cool is if Vine Server has a “Test” feature which would actually test remote connectivity into your server for you, via some gateway you set up out there. I recently got burned by counting on accessing a remote Mac only to discover that between the NAT and the port forwarding on the users firewall, I couldn’t reach their Vine Server. Pretty cool idea, eh? It is Chrismas time, you know
Thanks again,
Dave
1 - This has been added for Desktop servers running on 10.5 (we are looking at a 10.4 solution as well).
2 - We’re evaluating the new interface and might move the port num back but haven’t quite resolved that yet.
3 - This is already in place somewhat, if you start the server you should see the IP #'s go green or red if they can be resolved externally. This isn’t quite as thorough a check as your suggestion but it should work in most cases.
Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming.
Thanks for the reply, Jonathan.
3.0 is looking pretty good so far. I haven’t seen the double icon problem. It’s great that Vine allows reduced color depth since Leopard’s VNC seems to require full color depth, making it unusable.
A few things:
-
When you click on the red or green IP addresses, they lose their color and never get it back. Not sure if that’s by design, but fyi.
-
It would be very handy if Vine Server let you disconnect clients individually (without shutting down)
-
It would be cool if Vine Server showed you the command line syntax of how to invoke itself given the current choice of settings, in case someone wants to run things from the command line
Great work!
Dave
An updated Vine3.0 Beta2 is now available:
Updated areas include -
Improvements to full screen mode in Vine Viewer.
Not losing the Control Panel, fixed a crashing bug and improved mouse tracking.
System Server on 10.4 and 10.5
This should be working pretty well now and finally has it’s OWN interface for setting connection properties. On 10.5 - It does disconnect and restart when logging in or doing fast user switching but it now follows the console properly AND the clipboard is available (outside the login window).
Keyboard Settings
US Keyboard (DEFAULT) – this is how Vine behaved in the past, assuming you are configured for a US keyboard
Load Keyboard - this setting means that when Vine Server start it will read the currently selected keyboard and use that to determine what keys it should hit. This works well if both the local and remote machine are using the same international keyboard.
Unicode Keyboard - this means that you will set your keyboard to use “Unicode Hex Input” (on the international panel). This special keyboard supplied by Apple allows us to type ANY unicode keyboard. This mode works well if a variety of users will be connecting using keyboards that have a variety of unicode characters.
I’m unable to get the Vine Server in beta 2 to even start on my MacBook (Leopard 10.5.1).
It shows up in the dock for a second and then disappears with the standard Mac OS crash dialog window displayed. I tried rebooting just to see if that had anything to do with it, but it didn’t help. Vine Viewer seems to load fine, however.
Here are the relevant messages (that I could find) from my logs:
Dec 14 14:35:08 SteelBreeze Vine Server[254]: Loading Bundle /Applications/Vine Server.app/Contents/Resources/TigerBundle.bundle
Dec 14 14:35:08 SteelBreeze Vine Server[254]: Loading Bundle /Applications/Vine Server.app/Contents/Resources/JaguarBundle.bundle
Dec 14 14:35:08 SteelBreeze Vine Server[254]: *** Assertion failure in -[NSTextFieldCell _objectValue:forString:errorDescription:], /SourceCache/AppKit/AppKit-949/AppKit.subproj/NSCell.m:1338
Dec 14 14:35:08 SteelBreeze Vine Server[254]: An uncaught exception was raised
Dec 14 14:35:08 SteelBreeze Vine Server[254]: Invalid parameter not satisfying: aString != nil
Dec 14 14:35:08 SteelBreeze Vine Server[254]: *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSInternalInconsistencyException’, reason: ‘Invalid parameter not satisfying: aString != nil’
Dec 14 14:35:08 SteelBreeze Vine Server[254]: Stack: (
2421289579,
2514333851,
2421289035,
2432581860,
2437507041,
2437506819,
2437506645,
2438052005,
44745,
38874,
2421348981,
2437391726,
2437351324,
2437349629,
2437348672,
2437348478,
2437347630,
35030,
34813
)
Dec 14 14:35:11 SteelBreeze ReportCrash[255]: Formulating crash report for process Vine Server[254]
Dec 14 14:35:12 SteelBreeze ReportCrash[255]: Saved crashreport to /Users/ptackbar/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Vine Server_2007-12-14-143508_SteelBreeze.crash using uid: 501 gid: 20, euid: 501 egid: 20
Dec 14 14:35:12 SteelBreeze com.apple.launchd[147] ([0x0-0x20020].com.redstonesoftware.VineServer[254]): Exited abnormally: Trace/BPT trap
Yup, thanks for catching that – it’s a problem with missing preferences.
Corrected now and a new beta has been posted.
The new beta 2 fixed the problem, thanks!
It looks like Beta 2 has fixed all problems I found with the first beta (for Viewer and Server). I really like the new feature (for Leopard) that allows clipboard access when running the system server.
I’m still running the first beta but let me pass along one more thing that looks like a bug…
When I had one client connected the badge on the dock icon showed up correctly. But when I did a Stop Server without disconnecting the client, the badge didn’t get “cleaned up” so it was left on. Likewise, when I went to quit Vine Server, it warned about the connected client, which really wasn’t connected at all.
Thanks! And keep up the good work,
Dave