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ScreenConnect Unattended Session connect to the wrong computer...
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paulrick
#1 Posted : Wednesday, August 17, 2011 5:26:19 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/9/2011
Posts: 39
Location: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
I've noticed a few times that when an Unattended Session is created and installed, occasionally you will see it correctly identified in the list but when you connect to it you are connected to a completely different computer. I have no idea how or why this happens. Uninstalling and reinstalling the client doesn't seem to fix it either. It will randomly flip flop as well. I will try to explain: If I connect to CLIENT A's computer it connects me to CLIENT B's computer, but the name of the connection is CLIENT A. Then if I go and try to connect to CLIENT B's computer it will connect me to CLIENT A's computer. Like I have said I've uninstalled and reinstalled the client on both PC's and this only seems to be happening to a handful of connections out of 300.
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bigdessert
#2 Posted : Thursday, August 18, 2011 4:48:17 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 9/14/2010
Posts: 458
Location: Minnesota
I would give support a call so they can dig into why this is happening.
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Jake Morgan
#3 Posted : Thursday, August 18, 2011 7:55:52 PM
Rank: Administration
Joined: 4/9/2010
Posts: 859
Can you reliably reproduce this? Could we reproduce this on your install? If you check the session log, are there different computers from different IPs connecting as guests to the session?
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paulrick
#4 Posted : Wednesday, August 24, 2011 8:46:31 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/9/2011
Posts: 39
Location: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
In the session I do see different IP addresses for the connection, it alternates between the same IP addresses of the "offending" workstations.

NOTE I called into tech support and spoke with Reid, he has me checking a few things. I'll follow up with him, and post my results here for anyone interested. I'm mainly editting this post so Jake doesn't have to do double work on the same issue. Thanks for the support.
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bigdessert
#5 Posted : Wednesday, August 24, 2011 9:40:37 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 9/14/2010
Posts: 458
Location: Minnesota
paulrick wrote:
In the session I do see different IP addresses for the connection, it alternates between the same IP addresses of the "offending" workstations.


Jake can chime in here, but could it be possible both have the same name? would they have this behavior if clientA and clientB both had a session with name "test" for instance?

can you check both the offending computers in the services and check the t= variable at the very end.
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Jake Morgan
#6 Posted : Wednesday, August 24, 2011 9:58:16 PM
Rank: Administration
Joined: 4/9/2010
Posts: 859
They can have the same tags now, though that would be confusing to me.

This issue was due to the machines having the same MachineGUID and computer name. We combine and hash these to come up with a session ID for a machine. If imaging machines, you should sysprep first so that unique MachineGUIDs will be generated. We thought that at least adding the computer name to this would effectively uniquify it, but not always!

Adding a MAC address or something would help, but those are problematic because of all of the virtual tunneling adapters and all of the misc network adapters these days. We still have to use MAC addresses for our java unattended clients.
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bigdessert
#7 Posted : Wednesday, August 24, 2011 10:01:47 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 9/14/2010
Posts: 458
Location: Minnesota
Jake Morgan wrote:
They can have the same tags now, though that would be confusing to me.

This issue was due to the machines having the same MachineGUID and computer name. We combine and hash these to come up with a session ID for a machine. If imaging machines, you should sysprep first so that unique MachineGUIDs will be generated. We thought that at least adding the computer name to this would effectively uniquify it, but not always!

Adding a MAC address or something would help, but those are problematic because of all of the virtual tunneling adapters and all of the misc network adapters these days. We still have to use MAC addresses for our java unattended clients.


Interesting read...
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paulrick
#8 Posted : Tuesday, September 13, 2011 2:16:33 PM
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Joined: 3/9/2011
Posts: 39
Location: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Sorry for the delay, but it was a duplicate Machine GUID. Sysprep hadn't been run on those two PC's and there you have it. So the issue is resolved at this point.
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paulrick
#9 Posted : Tuesday, November 15, 2011 5:06:24 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/9/2011
Posts: 39
Location: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Hey guys,

Jumping back on this subject, would it ever be possible to add the MAC address to the session ID generation? After doing some looking, even after sysprepping, the MachineGUID isn't always unique.
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bigdessert
#10 Posted : Tuesday, November 15, 2011 7:38:31 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 9/14/2010
Posts: 458
Location: Minnesota
I think if it is going to be changed it should be generated off of a combination of things machineGUID + MAC or machineGUID + HDD SN

That way there is not a single ounce of possibility of this.
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paulrick
#11 Posted : Tuesday, November 15, 2011 10:14:47 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
Joined: 3/9/2011
Posts: 39
Location: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
That was my thought as well. Use the combination of the three if possible.
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Jake Morgan
#12 Posted : Wednesday, November 16, 2011 5:09:54 PM
Rank: Administration
Joined: 4/9/2010
Posts: 859
Several issues with changing it:

- how would existing machines not appear under different session IDs
- it's hard to tell which MAC address is the one you want; a list of network adapters on my w2k8 produces 8 different adapters, most virtual
- even with this stuff a cloned VM or image can still be identical

The current method under any sort of best practices for windows deployments should never produce identical sessions. We're sympathetic to the "woops" of already having a bunch of installs like this, but it's too late to change it without introducing a lot of complexities
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