Every Mac has Remote Control built-in:

Every OSX client workstation has the software to act as a remote control server built-in. Note that the server is the part which shares his desktop; and the client (or Admin as Apple calls it) is the part which receives/controls the server.

In order to remotely manage your OSX workstation, all you need to do is click the “Apple Remote Desktop” (ARD) checkbox for under “Sharing” in “System Preferences”.

By default ARD shares only for ARD Admins; but if you click the “Access Privileges” button, you can enter a password for VNC clients: it should be different from your account.

How to control your Mac:

We have two choices here:

    • you can buy the ARD Admin software from Apple

    • you can download free VNC Admin software

    • ThightVNC is free (open-source hosted on sourcecorge.net)

To control my Mac from a Windows PC I am using the TightVNC Viewer 1.2.9; as I could not get UltraVNC 1.0.1 to work with the Mac server.

How to restart the VNC server:

In order for SSH to work, you must have previously enabled the “Remote Login” option (refer to Sharing above) SSH client and server are built into OSX.

1. ssh user@192.168.1.4
   

2. sudo kill -9 `ps ax|grep VNC -m1|awk '{print $1}'`
   

Note that kill -9 will gracefully shutdown and restart the VNC service

How to re-map the ARD port:

1) use the ARD manager tool to configure another port

2) or use a GUI firewall manager

http://www.hanynet.com/waterroof/

3. 3)or forward ARD to another port using firewall manager
   

4. fwd 127.0.0.1,5900 tcp from any to me dst-port 5901
   

ARD port redirection:

If you wish to access your Mac at home while on the road; then you must open these ports in your firewall. Because your broadband connection has only one IP address, you redirect incoming packets on these ports to the internal IP address of your computer.

This is the rule I am using to connect using VNC (both = TCP+UDP)

1. ARD1          3283  to 3283  both   192.168.1. 3 YES
   

2. ARD2          5900  to 5988  both   192.168.1. 3 YES