Losing control of Xserve after Backup

[@msterdamned]

Hi all,

 

We have an Xserve with ARD 2.2 running 10.3.9. We've had to remove the VGA card since we needed the second PCI slot for an ATTO UltraSCSI card for our RAID 5. The other PCI slot is taken up by our ATTO FiberChannel card for our video editing array. So we have to run it as a headless machine controlled by Apple Remote Desktop.

 

The problem is that we lose control after running Retrospect to make nightly backups to an LTO 2 tape drive. When we come in in the morning we can reconnect via ARD to the xServe, move the cursor, and see the desktop but cannot take control or (seemingly) even click on anything. However, if we move the cursor to the HD icon (or any menu item or folder or application icon) double click then nothing seems to happens. But if we close the xServe ARD control window and then open it up again we can see that the Finder HAS opened the HD we just clicked on. In this way we can navigate to where we want to go by constantly closing and reopeining the ARD control window to the xServe after every single click. The only other option is to reboot the whole machine which p1sses off our 20+ users who rely on it for file storage and access.

 

So it would appear to be a simple redraw/refresh problem but I'm not sure if this is caused by some bug in ARD or in Quartz or Retrospect or what. I did find article #5537 in the knowledge base which aludes to known issues with using Retrospect and ARD on the xServe but the article mentions no specifics let alone any solutions. #5537

 

Is anyone else experiencing this? The backups work fine we just lose control off our xServe.

[natew]

Hi

 

For reference, I work with a customer with Retrospect and ARD on 30 Xserves (10.3). They are not seeing this problem.

 

If you don't run backups at night how does ARD behave? Does ARD act strangely after an immediate backup in Retrospect? (not scripted)

 

Thanks

Nate

[hirschi]

hi

 

from time to time i'm seeing the same problem, but not only on xServe but "normal" desktop machines, running os x server 10.3.9 and ARD and retrospect.

 

I havent found the "pattern" yet when it's happening, but I dont think it has something to do with retrospect, because in our case i have seen it happen while i'm connected "during the day", no retrospect involved, via ARD, log out, log in again and there it is.

 

as you mention unfortunately the only way out is a reboot of the machine. what i do to force a refresh and see what is happing -> using the slider in ARD to change the color/greyscale setting.