Casper remote not authenticating

dmeridith
New Contributor III

Casper remote is not authenticating properly on some machines. I am getting the following whne it tried to authenticate

Sending Wake On LAN command...
Opening SSH Connection to 10.2.104.17...
Authenticating...
Authenticating...
Authenticating...

any ideas? I think this machine has lost it's management username and password im not sure how to fix this.

18 REPLIES 18

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

If yuo think it lost its management account information, you can check that in the Mac's detailed inventory section. Under Computer Information (in version 8.x) or General (in version 9.x) click either the (•••) or "Edit" button. You should then see fields for Management account name & password. in Version 8.x they show up as SSH Username and SSH Password.

If you know what that should be, you can change them or update them there and try again.

One way to test if the account is working is to simply ssh into the Mac from your own with the username & password you think it should be. If you can get in, then enter those same credentials in the above fields.

If that doesn't work its possible some services are disabled on the target Mac, like ssh itself.

ctangora
Contributor III

This happens when people update the machine instead of fresh installs. Updates kill off sub-500 users. Two options are to either run the QuickAdd package on the machine, or to add the user back in.

One of the ways to do this is to have two policies, one that creates the user and another that resets the password. In the first policy, have it run on the every15 trigger and run this in the advanced section...

/usr/sbin/jamf createAccount -username CasperAdminAccount -realname CasperAdminAccount -password PasswordGoesHere -home /private/var -admin -hidden -secureSSH -verbose; /usr/sbin/jamf policy -trigger reset_admin_password

The second policy is triggered by the reset_admin_password trigger. All the second policy does is randomize the password and update inventory. Then you should be able to SSH/Remote into the machine.

dmeridith
New Contributor III

any Ideas on how to do this on a larger scale?

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

To be accurate, regular OS updates, such as updating from 10.8.3 to 10.8.5, do not and have never killed sub 501 accounts. Only full OS installs, such as going from 10.7.x to 10.8, as an example. We'll have the same issue when 10.9 is out I'm sure.

dmeridith
New Contributor III

and i changed the management username and password on the jss and on the machine and I still have not gotten remote to authenticate.

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

Did you confirm the account actually exists, by trying to ssh into the Mac yourself with that account? Or, if you know of another admin account on that Mac, you can ssh in with that and then check dscl to see if the SSH account listed in the JSS actually exists.
@ctangora may be correct that the account was removed at some point and needs to be recreated using a QuickAdd.pkg.

ctangora
Contributor III

So to confirm the management account is on the computer we use something like this. It doesn't check to see if the use is an admin, but does see if it exists.

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $(dscl . -search /Users RecordName JSSAdmin) ]]; then
echo "<result>OK</result>"
else
echo "<result>MISSING</result>"
fi

exit 0

There is more to the script that we use, but if you have all the same management account this should do the trick for you.

kylegato
New Contributor

Just ran into this issue ourselves. Here was our fix:

  1. Remove the jamf framework (sudo jamf removeFramework)
  2. Manually remove your management user account
  3. Re-enroll computer
  4. Profit!

jillhughes
New Contributor III

We are still getting this error when trying to send thru casper remote. I have done what kylegato suggested and it has worked in the past but not now. Anybody else have any other ideas?

cpdecker
Contributor III

@jillhughes , we have been losing Casper Remote access to some of our machines in the same way--authentication failure. The fix I found that has worked consistently for me was to remove the Management account on the bugged machine using the jamf binary. It's just one line:

sudo jamf deleteAccount -username Management

After that, I reinstall the QuickAdd package, refresh my Casper Remote session and everything works. Hope this helps.

dcain
New Contributor

We just started seeing this when upgrading iMacs from Mavericks to Yosemite but none of these fixes seem to work. Are there any fresh ideas out there?

Chris_Hafner
Valued Contributor II

I've seen this upgrade re-introduce the "Device Signature" error that some JAMF users saw in mid-2013. What happens when you run jamf recon?

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

@Chris_Hafner do the devices with the error have a differing UUID from their JSS records UDID?

Chris_Hafner
Valued Contributor II

@bentoms Honestly, I have no idea. Worse, I never thought to check! I solved that issue some time ago here on campus as, for us, it was as simple as running another quickadd to correct an issue after the 9.8 binary move. I actually never thought to check the differences between the UUID/UDIDs That's quite a good idea and I'm going to keep that one under my hat for future thinking. No, in regards to this issue I'm really just fishing for symptoms.

bentoms
Release Candidate Programs Tester

@Chris_Hafner Yea I'm just guessing.

We've got a couple of duplicate JSS entries as the Macs UUID has changed somehow. I've been trying to figure out what caused that, & what errors that causes.

Then correcting via the API.

donmontalvo
Esteemed Contributor III

@bentoms wrote:

We've got a couple of duplicate JSS entries as the Macs UUID has changed somehow. I've been trying to figure out what caused that, & what errors that causes.

This can happen when logic boards are replaced.

--
https://donmontalvo.com

dcain
New Contributor

UUID records match on our machines. Recon works as suspected and enrolls machines properly. Yes mother board swaps will certainly cause UUID issues.

dlondon
Valued Contributor

Hi,

I had the same problem. Kyle's method was very similar to what worked for us:

Remove the jamf framework (sudo jamf removeFramework) Did not remove the management account Removed the machine from the JSS Re-enrolled the computer

Regards,

David