NXD Service won’t start on MacOS 10.12.6 Sierra

[apfaffman]

Hi there. I’ve got a case where the NXD service refuses to start and no clear logs (log export is an empty file) with NoMachine 6.9.2 on MacOS 10.12.6.

Odd, because I’ve had this same version of NoMachine work on another 10.12.6 Mac Pro. Mac Firewall is not running on either machine.

I also understand that NoMachine requires port 22 to be available, meaning Mac management via ssh should be disabled under Preferences > Sharing? I have tried disabling this, but no luck so far.

I did try searching the forums for this question/solution, so apologies if I missed it. Thanks for reading.

[og00r]

Only nxd process is affected? Are other processes running correctly?
Could you paste output of ‘ps -ef | grep nx’?
Also could you gather nxserver logs from the affected remote server?
This article contains information how to do it correctly:
https://www.nomachine.com/DT10O00163 (you can attach them here or send directly to forum[at]nomachine[dot]com).
If possible please run nxserver –restart after enabling logs, then gather them.

[apfaffman]

hi, og00r, thanks for your help.

screenshot of grep’d ps output and NoMachine logs are attached. logs were collected after running nxserver –restart, as you suggested.

Attachments:

1. 

   2020-04-17-12_13_36-NEO-10.17.119.199-Remote-Desktop-Connection.png
   

1. NoMachine-log.tar.gz

[apfaffman]

Hi, everyone.

So the looks report some useful information.

nx.error.log reports a lot of the following:

71393 775 15:15:02 858.855 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71422 775 15:15:05 442.653 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71436 775 15:15:07 393.904 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71478 775 15:15:21 547.488 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71563 775 15:15:39 862.350 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71577 775 15:15:42 135.068 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71586 775 15:15:44 431.100 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71674 775 15:16:43 332.971 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.
71760 775 15:17:01 559.388 ServerSubsystem: ERROR! Cannot find product id.

Meantime, nx.server.log reports no nx user exists:

2020-04-14 16:38:13 605.375 23831 NXSERVER WARNING! User nx doesn’t exist in system.
2020-04-14 16:38:15 245.391 23854 NXSERVER WARNING! User nx doesn’t exist in system.
2020-04-14 16:38:18 902.235 24264 NXSERVER WARNING! User nx doesn’t exist in system.
2020-04-14 16:40:03 265.723 24264 NXSERVER Previous message repeated 5 times
2020-04-14 16:40:03 265.861 24264 NXSERVER WARNING! Timeout 60s when waiting for nxserver –daemon.
2020-04-14 16:40:03 265.952 24264 NXSERVER WARNING! nxserver –deamon is not ready.
2020-04-14 16:47:28 294.895 25004 NXSERVER WARNING! User nx doesn’t exist in system.
2020-04-14 16:47:35 448.424 25020 NXSERVER WARNING! User nx doesn’t exist in system.
2020-04-14 16:47:35 489.920 25020 NXSERVER Previous message repeated 1 time

Seems the nx user was not created successfully and necessary ownerships weren’t created on nxd files… so I checked the installation logs. Here’s the abridged version:

 

NX> 700 ERROR: Cannot change ownership of: /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/passwords.db.lock to: nx:wheel.
NX> 700 ERROR: Cannot change ownership of: /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/administrators.db.lock to: nx:wheel.
NX> 700 ERROR: Cannot change ownership of: /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/guests.db.lock to: nx:wheel.
NX> 700 ERROR: Cannot install file: /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/keys/node.localhost.id_dsa.pub.
NX> 700 Result: NX> 162 Disabled service: nxserver.
NX> 162 Disabled service: nxnode.
NX> 162 Disabled service: nxd..

A bunch of NX 700 errors stating that certain files or folders in the NoMachine installation directory couldn’t have their ownership changed to nx:wheel or nx:nx, then the installer disabling nxd.

Before I go about uninstalling, manually creating an nx sudo user, and then reinstalling, does anything else seem like a good idea to try?

[zaq]

Hello apfaffman,

You are right, looks like your issue is related to presence of nx user
From logs looks like in the beginning of installation the user had
existed:

NX> 700 Running: /usr/sbin/chown nx:wheel ‘/Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/update.cfg’.
NX> 700 Result: OK.

but in the next phase there where problems:

NX> 700 Running: /usr/sbin/chown nx:wheel ‘/Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/guests.db.lock’.
NX> 700 ERROR: Cannot change ownership of: /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/guests.db.lock to: nx:wheel.

Looks like the user nx was removed during installation process.

Do you use domain users/LDAP/ActiveDirectory? Do you have non
standard restrictions for users?

[Author]

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