Britgirl

[Britgirl]

This is happening because indeed NoMachine tries to access a home directory in order to create the .nx directory but the directory doesn’t exist yet and so NoMachine receives a permission denied message. If it’s dynamically created after that, the user can then log in to the GUI.

A way round this is to edit the NoMachine cfg file on each Mac server:
/Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/etc/node.cfg

Find there line:
#UserNXDirectoryPath "" uncomment it by removing “#’ and in “” put the path to some directory which is permitted for all users. It could be /tmp for example or any other created directory with permissions at least 666 or even 777.

i.e
UserNXDirectoryPath “/tmp”

[Britgirl]

NoMachine Network is the feature you need. This will avoid having to enable port forwarding on the router.

You can tick the box in the feature request to be notified when it is released: https://www.nomachine.com/FR07J02731

[Britgirl]

There is an article which contains some guidelines for sizing a NoMachine Cloud Server multi-server setup and benchmark tests for v. 6

https://www.nomachine.com/AR02Q01015

[Britgirl]

Logs show that you are now logging in with a username oem@Zenith which doesn’t exist.

2020-04-23 15:03:05 047.001 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! User oem@Zenith doesn't exist in system.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 047.172 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! NXLogin: Cannot retrieve absolute username for user: oem@Zenith.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 047.419 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! User oem@Zenith doesn't exist in system.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 047.715 20656 NXSERVER Previous message repeated 1 time
2020-04-23 15:03:05 047.792 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! NXLogin: Cannot retrieve absolute username for user: oem@Zenith.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 048.033 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! User oem@Zenith doesn't exist in system.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 048.149 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! NXLogin: Cannot retrieve absolute username for user: oem@Zenith.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 048.366 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! User oem@Zenith doesn't exist in system.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 048.838 20656 NXSERVER Previous message repeated 1 time
2020-04-23 15:03:05 048.913 20656 NXSERVER WARNING! NXLogin: Cannot retrieve absolute username for user: oem@Zenith.
2020-04-23 15:03:05 049.183 20656 NXSERVER ERROR! Authentication with 'NX-password' from host '192.168.1.15' failed. Error is 'Wrong password or login'.
2020-04-23 15:03:14 110.278 20688 NXSERVER ERROR! Authentication with 'NX-password' from host '192.168.1.15' failed. Error is 'Wrong password or login'

The best way to proceed is to do the following:

1) in a shell/terminal on the Linux server host, find the username using the command (run it in the terminal):
whoami

2) test the username and password in command line on the Linux host:

$ /usr/NX/bin/nxexec --auth
Username:  your_username
Password: your_password

The best way to check is to use the same credentials you are using to login to that Linux host.
If you are using oem@zenith then try zenith\oem (format DOMAIN\username). If it’s ‘oem’, then use that.

If nxexec --auth is successful, it will provide system groups where the user belongs.
Then you can use these same credentials in the connection GUI to start the connection.

If nxexec reports an error it means that user username and password are wrong.

[Britgirl]

We do rigorous testing, replicating typical user scenarios like this. When we tested the beta version of Ubuntu, there were no issues with NoMachine automatically restarting afterwards. However, you can’t exclude that something may go wrong with the actual update itself, not that NoMachine won’t restart.

We will also be testing Ubuntu 20 LTS, so we can add it to our official list of supported distros. This normally takes about 30 days.

[Britgirl]

$ cd /usr
$ sudo tar xvzf nomachine_4.0.369_1_x86_64.tar.gz
$ sudo /usr/NX/nxserver --install

Looks like you’re installing an old version there Zenith. Version 4 is no longer supported.

Just to clarify:
for 32 bit systems install this on the server or client side: https://www.nomachine.com/download/download&id=2

for 64 bit systems install this on the server or client side: https://www.nomachine.com/download/download&id=3

If you install a 32-bit on 64-bit hardware, the installation can complete with warnings and there will be errors in the logs.

Zenith, if you are still having problems with authentication and you have indeed the latest version installed on both the client and server sides, can you submit the logs like I requested the other week? Enable debug, reproduce the problem and gather the logs and send them as you did before.

Otherwise, if you no longer have problems authenticating, I will close this topic.

[Britgirl]

Just a humble thought here, perhaps documentation could have a centralized index page with all the topics divided into categories, and an internal automation tool for you guys that adds a page to that index every time a new functionality is implemented.

I’ll pass it on to our website developers 😉

[Britgirl]

Please see:
How to connect to NoMachine when the server is behind a NAT router or a firewall
https://www.nomachine.com/AR11L00827

[Britgirl]

Do I need Pulse Audio installed on the Cloud Server?

No you don’t.   Check audio kext files on the Mac host. NoMachine needs to install KEXTs to manage services like audio support, disk sharing and USB forwarding. If KEXTs are not approved, the software will install and work correctly but such services will be not available.

kextstat | grep nx

If it shows nothing you need to change our file permissions and load kexts to the system

sudo chmod -R 755 /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/bin/drivers/nxaudio.kext
sudo chown  -R root:wheel /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/bin/drivers/nxaudio.kext
sudo kextutil  /Applications/NoMachine.app/Contents/Frameworks/bin/drivers/nxaudio.kext

More about this is here:

https://www.nomachine.com/AR01P00962

And you can get some background reading on how Apple’s new security measures here: https://www.nomachine.com/AR10P01001 (although this was explicitly written for users installing earlier versions of NoMachine).

Regarding this:

Error: Cannot create session directory: /var/empty/.nx

The error you see refers to ‘/var/empty/.nx’ on your Mac host. Directory ‘.nx’ needs to be created inside user’s home directory. As you most likely noticed, ‘/var/empty/.nx’ looks unusual for a home directory path. Is it the way your system is configured?
On the Mac machine, log on with the account you are using during NoMachine connection, open terminal, type ‘pwd’ and press enter. What’s the output of this command?

[Britgirl]

It already is a feature.

How can I send Ctrl+Alt+Delete to a remote Windows computer?
https://www.nomachine.com/AR02L00784

Additionally, as an alternative, you can use the Ctrl+Alt+End key combination to enable the forwarding of Ctrl+Alt+Del. A different shortcut can be defined in the NoMachine client User Interface via the Player preferences -> Input -> Change shortcuts interface.

[Britgirl]

Did you follow the guidelines here: https://www.nomachine.com/getting-started-with-nomachine#internet

On your local network are you able to connect?

Can you tell me what error message you are getting? Screenshots can be useful.

[Britgirl]

Here are a couple of alternative ways to close the graphical session:

How to solve a black screen on headless machines
https://www.nomachine.com/AR03P00973

TIP: installing Workstation avoids having to use any of these workarounds.

[Britgirl]

Just to clarify, when documentation mentions ‘client’ it means connecting client. In the case of the Cloud Server, there are three components: client (the user/device connecting), Cloud Server (Linux for you, child server (in your case Enterprise Desktop on Mac).

If there is anything in the documentation which is not clear, by all means forward your comments directly to forum[at]nomachine[dot]com and I will make sure they are passed on 🙂

[Britgirl]

‘Gateway’ was the keyword to allow me to understand what you’d like to achieve. I missed that from your original post. So you should be installing Cloud Server on your Linux host. This will be the entry point or gateway. On each of the Macs you need to install Enterprise Desktop. It will look something like the last diagram you can see in this document https://www.nomachine.com/DT03O00131 .  That document illustrates how to set up two Cloud Servers in failover, HA is an optional. You can just have one Cloud Server if you prefer, like in the illustration at the bottom.

Adding child servers (your Macs) to the main Cloud Server is the next step. It can be done via the user interface of the Cloud Server. See this tutorial for the steps on how to do that: https://www.nomachine.com/adding-servers-to-nomachine-cloud-server-via-the-user-interface. If you prefer to do it via the command line, then see https://www.nomachine.com/AR04R01082.

This should be enough to get you started 🙂

Futher references:

NoMachine Cloud Server Installation and Configuration – https://www.nomachine.com/DT02O00123#3.1
Activating two-factor authentication – https://www.nomachine.com/AR12L00828

 

[Britgirl]

@Kalabagh, please look at Kroy’s previous response and check that it is set to what he proposed.

[Author]

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