Sporadic check in on Macs and unstable connections

abutterman
New Contributor III

Lately some of our Macs have been checking in irregularly. We have it set to 15 minute check in. I've noticed some taking upwards of 30 minutes between reported check ins. Then even worse, some are checking in only once or twice a day. Those machines are also not running policy consistently. For instance, I have a policy that runs at check in once per day to just update inventory just to keep everything current. On one of the computers in question, the last check in was at 8:18am (eastern) today and the last time the update inventory policy ran was 2 days ago. These computers are also exhibiting issues with remote connections. VNC connections frequently fail due to lack of response from the computer and when they do connect, I just get a black screen. Also, Jamf remote (10.20.1) just hangs trying on anything I do showing that its opening the ssh connection which never times out and just sits in that state. Has anyone else come across anything like this? Worst part right now is no one is allowed on site so I can't even sit at one of them to troubleshoot.

1 REPLY 1

RobbieReichard
New Contributor III

I have been having similar issues with Jamf Remote getting stuck on "Opening SSH Connection to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" and it never connects. I ran Wireshark and I found the client is making completing the cert exchange and then it just stops until I cancel the Jamf Remote session.

One way I get it to work is to open an SSH connection to the client via the terminal. It asks if I want to trust the cert and I type "yes" and then it successfully connects. I then attempt to push a package to that client via Jamf Remote and it successfully connects and pushes out the package.

I have checked the logs and I am not seeing anything that points to why the original connection is not working. This only happens to when using a Catalina machine to push the package to a Catalina machine. If I use Jamf Remote on an older Mac like Mojave it works just fine the first time.