Macintosh Server Applications Software at The Mac Orchard

Vine Server

Open source; $0

Current Version: 3.0 (December 20, 2007)

Vine Server (also known as OSXvnc) is a native VNC server for OS X that allows you to view and interact with your Mac OS X desktop from another computer over a network. OSXvnc is free software and is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Vine 3.0 includes new versions of Vine Viewer and Vine Server with a host of new features and options.

Viewer:

New Full Screen Mode
UltraVNC authentication

Interface:

Added a basic control panel
Moved settings to a dedicate Preference Pane.
Moved "View Log" and "Reverse Connection" to menus/sheets
Added external IP lookup and ability to verify access to your VNC server from detected IPs
Always allow a server restart from the UI
Panel to prevent accidentally quitting Vine Server when users are connected

Startup:

Better IP and DNS resolution so that initial startup is not delayed (as can happen on Leopard)
Added LaunchD support for the System Server on 10.4 and 10.5
Fixed a Leopard issue with displaying an extra icon
Added better versioning (AVS)

VNC Server:

Added support for Unicode keyboard (10.4+)
Added support to detect keyboard type (10.4+)
Added support to control where events enter the system (Event Taps) (10.4+)
Fixed a bug auto-detecting the proper port when SSH-only was checked.
Fixed a lockup problem in the OSXvnc-server process that could occur with Rich Clipboard Support enabled.
Fixed a problem repeatedly trying to send an empty clipboard buffer.
Fixed a bug with restoring otherArguments from defaults.

An OS 9 version - called "OS9vnc" - is also available for download.

User Reviews

"I've been using OSXvnc on three OS X boxes that I'm using on servers. I have it installed to load automatically on start-up and it has been rock-solid and surprisingly fast. There is only one major glitch -the cursor isn't an arrow; it is just a small dot. Nevertheless, I can maintain these servers remotely over the Internet. Terrific! Now if I could just find a really nice listserver instead of Majordomo for OS X..."
—Gordon Goodman

Submit another review!

Download the Mac OS X (Cocoa / Universal) version.

Also See . . .

Can't find what you're looking for? Try a search:

Also, if you have an older Mac, be sure to check out the "Classic" applications page for more options.

Finally, take a look at ALEMIA if you think you know that name of an application, but aren't quite sure.

Built Into Mac OS X

Mac OS X has a huge amount of TCP/IP-based server software built into it that I don't specifically cover here. Your "Sharing" Preference Pane allows you to enable and disable these services with a click of the mouse. The software running behind the scenes to provide many of these services is generally of the open source variety. The standard release of Mac OS X includes, among many others:

Apache httpd (web server; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane).
Postfix (mail server; see Mac OS X Hints for more information).
tnftpd (FTP server; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane).
OpenSSH (Secure Shell server; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane via "Remote Login" but additionally configurable via selected applications listed on this page).
BIND (Domain Name System server; see Mac OS X Hints for more information).
Samba (Windows file sharing; enabled via the Sharing Preference Pane).
XFree86 (X Window server; enabled via the "X11" application in your "Utilities" folder, if you elected to install it with Mac OS X).

Of course, Mac OS X Server includes many more, in addition to offering more recent versions of many of the above servers.

Also Consider . . .