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Recently, I found myself remote and unable to connect to NoMachine. Usually, this is because my Mac is asleep and I wake it up by connecting with [removed]; on rare occasion, I need to connect with [removed] and restart NoMachine or something. In this particular case, [removed] would not connect, either. I was able to ping the Mac, but didn’t have any other remote access options available. Once I had local access again, I logged in to find a NoMachine update window presented. After installing the update, without taking any other special action (no reboot, no service calls, etc), I was able to connect with NoMachine and [removed] again. The version to which I was prompted to update is 8.14.2, but I am not sure what version was running prior to the automatic update prompt. Is this considered normal / expected such that I might need to disable automatic updates in order to prevent repeats of this experience? Alternatively, is this behavior part of a known issue that should be fixed in future updates or something where collecting additional data might be helpful?
Our update dialog window should certainly not be blocking access. Can you tell us the macOS version, so we can start an investigation? Also, you mentioned waking your mac up. You can also do that with NoMachine if you are on the same LAN. Have you tried the Wake-on-Lan feature?
macOS version is Sonoma 14.7 on an M1 mini. I only connect via VPN. I always try to use NoMachine to connect first, sometimes the mac wakes up, other times I have to switch to [removed] to get it to wake up and then connect with NoMachine. I’m not sure what “it” there would be to try beyond connecting or if you meant connecting should automatically trigger a wake up (in which case I try every time). For reference with regard to the waking up the mac part, there was a time when I had to use [removed] first every time, and I thought that was a mentioned as a known issue to be fixed in the future on these forums, but this was quite a while back.
For reference, I’m not 100% certain that I haven’t had similar issues with prior updates (where I couldn’t connect with NoMachine until I installed an update from the automatic update prompt), but if it did happen, I was able to use [removed] to connect and install the update, so I shrugged it off. Regardless, this is definitely the first time I couldn’t connect via [removed] and didn’t have to take any separate action to fix [removed] but instead found [removed] working again after the NoMachine update. Incidentally, when I connect via [removed] , I am using the built-in remote management unless some NoMachine update started preceding that.
I’m not sure what “it” there would be to try beyond connecting or if you meant connecting should automatically trigger a wake up (in which case I try every time).
Sorry I updated my post to be clearer 🙂 The “it” was referring to our wake-on-lan feature. It was not clear how you were “waking up” your mac and I had assumed, erroneously, that you were referring to wake-on-lan.
For reference with regard to the waking up the mac part, there was a time when I had to use [removed] first every time, and I thought that was a mentioned as a known issue to be fixed in the future on these forums, but this was quite a while back.
You posted https://forum.nomachine.com/topic/nomachine-quit-working-after-mac-sleep-disconnect-not-blank-screen-issue, but I believe we received no logs because you couldn’t reproduce the problem? But we can start a fresh investigation now that we know the macOS version. We’ll come back to you soon.
Actually, I think I was remembering https://forum.nomachine.com/topic/nomachine-quit-working-after-mac-sleep-disconnect-not-blank-screen-issue and I may have mixed two issues together there. As such, to clarify, right now, I have these two things going on:
1) The event described in this thread where I couldn’t connect with NoMachine or VNC until after I had local access and stepped through the update screen that showed up automatically (at which point both started working with no other steps taken). This happened for the first time yesterday.
2) The typical, but not entirely consistent, network timeout when I try to connect with NoMachine while the mac should be in standby, which I can work around by connecting with VNC (I only have to get a password prompt from a VNC client to wake the mac from standby, I don’t even have to log in). This behavior has persisted for years.
I had this issue again today without a NoMachine update prompt, so it appears that the NoMachine update prompt was simply correlated with the first occurrence of whatever is going on here. This time, I was able to connect later on without physical access and without taking any other action. The upgrade to 14.7 might be relevant considering that the behavior might be intermittent, but I did not experience this issue in the first days after that upgrade. In any case, perhaps the separate network timeout when in standby is something that should have been reported and investigated before now.
In any case, perhaps the separate network timeout when in standby is something that should have been reported and investigated before now.
We’ve not seen any issues with 1) the automatic software update dialog blocking remote access for NoMachine and 2) nor interfering with other applications in our tests. No other users have reported similar issues.
Please confirm: are you able to connect with NoMachine now? Are you also able to connect with NoMachine when the Mac has gone to sleep? Next time, if you have problems when connecting with NoMachine, the best thing to do is to zip up the entire .nx home directory on the Mac server and send it over, and we can take a look. If you encounter a problem which is reproducible, then in that case, enable debug first, reproduce the problem and send us the logs. The steps to reproduce the problem would also be useful to us. Here is the link to the instructions in case you need them next time: https://kb.nomachine.com/DT07S00243.
I am able to connect with NoMachine now. I am not always (and possibly not ever) able to connect with NoMachine when the mac has gone to sleep. The issue with NoMachine encountering a network timeout until/unless a [removed] client is used to wake the mac would always occur when the mac was asleep until several versions (months to years) ago, but after that, and prior to this week, it seemed more likely to occur only when the mac had been accessed physically within a few hours prior. The monitor is normally turned off after physical access, and this normally triggers sleep. Beyond that, there aren’t really any reproduction steps to take, disabling sleep gets rid of the issue.
I am not sure there would be anything new recorded in the .nx home directory if the mac isn’t waking up. Given this:
Should I also collect logs from the (Windows) client?
Should I enable debug only for specific nodes on both ends?
Should I report the time of the failure?
As I otherwise cannot tell if the issue I encountered is the one I am describing now or the one that started this week, should I also subsequently wake the mac with [removed] and make a good connection, providing both the time of the failure and the time of the success?
With the new issue that I am having now, I am not sure how I could possibly collect reliable data for the old issue. I am also not sure what is or isn’t reasonably feasible here (i.e. should NoMachine even be able to connect through a VPN on the router where the IP is on a separate subnet while the mac is in standby? I would think so when [removed] was, but I don’t know what’s different between the built-in service and the NoMachine service.).
Today, after NoMachine and [removed]both failed to connect, I sent a WOL packet from another device that is on the same subnet as the mac and was then immediately able to connect from the VPN subnet with NoMachine. While I’m not sure why connections seemed to work for a couple days after the last macOS update I installed, it is feasible that I had standby temporarily disabled at that time.
In my opinion, right now, my new issue, which effectively supersedes the old one, seems most likely to be an issue with the macOS update as opposed to anything particular with NoMachine, especially considering that the built-in remote control services are no longer waking the mac. I’d be happy to test things or collect data if you believe it would be beneficial, but I’m also fine considering this issue solved (albeit not exactly resolved).
should NoMachine even be able to connect through a VPN on the router where the IP is on a separate subnet while the mac is in standby
NoMachine’s WOL won’t be effective in that case.
So we can close the topic. I only suggested to gather logs if the problem of not being able to connect persisted. But this seems to be solved 🙂
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