Step 2 is the hard part.

Matt Ginzton writes here.

Update on Mac OS X Headless Fast User Switching Bug

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I complained that Fast User Switching over a Screen Sharing connection is a bag of hurt, and that it seems like something Apple’s never going to fix (#4 on the list at that link).

(Fingers crossed), maybe I was wrong: the what’s-new page for Lion1 advertises per-user screen sharing, which sounds more like the Microsoft Windows Terminal Server approach: a combination of fast user switching and remote access, so that multiple sessions can be active simultaneously, and remote sessions aren’t onscreen on the local console.

I can only hope that this new feature will make the old bug go away; I have a hard time imagining how they’d implement detached remote sessions that still result in the buggy behavior I described. Though, from the bug I described and earlier incarnations that seemed related, it seems that headless isn’t a primary/supported use case in Apple’s eyes.

Here’s hoping it gets better.


  1. I wonder how long that URL will last; probably until the next major version is announced, since there’s no versioning in the URL. I hate linking to links that are going to break, but I don’t know of a stable equivalent.

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