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talmy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
4,727
337
Oregon
I'm using Screen Sharing to run some GUI apps on my Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server. The mini normally doesn't have a display (or keyboard/mouse for that matter) connected. The problem is that frequently when logging in or out, especially using Fast User Switching, Screen Sharing disconnects and then will not reconnect until I plug in or unplug a monitor, or at least the DVI adapter. Its as though it loses the screen size. And the display settings seem to only offer choices of physical monitors that have been connected before. There should really be some way to configure the Mac for headless operation. Any ideas?
 

edddeduck

macrumors 68020
Mar 26, 2004
2,061
13
I'm using Screen Sharing to run some GUI apps on my Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server. The mini normally doesn't have a display (or keyboard/mouse for that matter) connected. The problem is that frequently when logging in or out, especially using Fast User Switching, Screen Sharing disconnects and then will not reconnect until I plug in or unplug a monitor, or at least the DVI adapter. Its as though it loses the screen size. And the display settings seem to only offer choices of physical monitors that have been connected before. There should really be some way to configure the Mac for headless operation. Any ideas?

I run a XServe (Headless) and if no monitor is connected it will only offer a maximum resolution of 1024x768. If I have a monitor with a higher resolution attached the maximum resolution is increased but running headless I can only get 1024x768.

I know it is not great but it appears to be designed this way.

Edwin
 

talmy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
4,727
337
Oregon
Time to clarify after reading the responses.

Fast user switching on the server always causes a lockup, so I don't use it. The client has it, but I don't switch users, I just use the capability to lock the computer without logging out.

At various points in time I had two different monitors connected for local setup. One with 1280x1024 resolution and the second with 1920x1080. There are two local accounts. The main administrator account has available settings (with no monitor connected) of 1024x768 in two frequencies and 1280x1024. The second account offers 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1920x1080. The available choices don't match! I had been running it at 1280x1024 but switched it to 1024x768 and the problems persevere. I'd like to wipe the choices out of memory but I can't find any plists to delete that seem to deal with this. I expect that if I were to do that the problems would vanish.

Keeping a monitor connected all the time is possible, but I really don't want to do that because of space and power consumption.
 

talmy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 26, 2009
4,727
337
Oregon
So, I think I may have found the problem. If I enable the scaling option in the Screen Sharing application it seems to maintain the connection through login/logout cycles. I have no idea why this works since the scaling option is intended for large remote screens being displayed on small displays, and that isn't the case here.
 
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