Mac Pro won't allow login after being idle for some time

[jbygden]

I have a MacPro (or 2 actually since I just installed a new one to replace the one I’ve been using for 3 years) that most of the time refuses to allow me to login after being idle for a while (overnight, over lunch etc.) I can ssh into it but not access it with ARD. When I arrive at my desk and touch the keyboard or mouse I can see the monitors going on (getting a signal from the MacPro to turn back on after sleep, but they all remain black (albeit with visible “background light”). reboot via ssh will do nothing more than kick me out of my ssh-session, and not let me back in. The only way I’ve found to resolve it when it happens is to power cycle the Mac - that works every time.

Anyone else seen this, or have some tips on troubleshooting/solving the issue?

MacPro (Late 2013) MacPro6,1
Apple 27" Thunderbolt Display
Dell 27" LED Display *2
Apple Wireless Keyboard (2009)
Apple Magic Mouse 2
MacOS 10.13.1 High Sierra (17B48)

[Sonic84]

I see this on some of my MacPro servers. The only work-around I've found is to reboot via SSH. My servers are headless, but to have a display accelerator plugged in: http://www.newertech.com/products/hdmi_headless_video_adapter.php

[jbygden]

Yeah, well, the only thing a reboot from ssh accomplishes is to kick me out of my ssh-session, and denying any new sessions...

[AVmcclint]

I've been seeing something similar happening lately with MacBook Pros with TouchBar and 10.12.6. Randomly, these Macs that are left idle and go to sleep (or the display turns off), refuse to completely wake up. I can SSH to them just fine. The difference between my issue and yours is that I am able to connect via ARD. In fact, I can see everything and control the computers just fine via ARD. It's just the displays refuse to wake up. So far it only happens on TouchMar MBPs running 10.12.6. It doesn't happen on non-TouchBar Macs and it didnt happen on 10.12.5.

I don't know if the issues are related, but I thought I'd share because of the similarities.

[al_platt]

Similar with a Mac Mini running 10.13 at home (not updated office bits yet)

Drops off ARD and vnc://

Can't Team Viewer either, it's almost like it's dropping network connectivity.

Pretty sure ssh was failing too but i'll test next time it happens.

Power cycle works every time.

[jbygden]

So, it turns out that I don't have an Apple Cinema Display but an Apple Thunderbolt Display and that doesn't seem to cooperate that well with High Sierra. I replaced the Monitor and problem went away.

[jbygden]

I initially thought I had solved it by using an external cable, but over the weekend I ran into the problem again. :(

After chatting with Apple Support I tried 're-installing' macOS from recovery partition, just installing over the existing OS. That worked over night, I won't say it solved the problem until after next weekend though.

[jbygden · Accepted solution]

So, now it's been two weekends since my last update - last Monday I had to work from home due to a sick daughter and I had the machine reboot due to an update.

This weekend it seems solved - so probably the 're-install' solved it.