🍏 How to solve the general Mac problem 🍎

[NewUserfromDE]

Of course the "Mac problem" (screen grabbing as far as I understand) was topic on the last monthly community meeting, as on the meetings before. There was consensus that a Mac developer is needed (Simon can everything, but not everything perfect) and some money.

I understand that MeshCentral is our beloved open cross-platform management tool - but with in reality only 1 platform fully supported. We don't know yet, how many MeshCentral users are out there and what they use and which problems have priority (and funding), but since we are blind Mac seems to be a good starting point.

But it was unclear to me, what to do next, how to find this developer (and funding). I'm not qualified to clarify this (no Mac experience), but that never stopped humans to do something. So here's the plan, open for discussion:

1. define the main problem (Mac users, write it down in this thread and/or Simon)
2. write a "job ad" ("volunteer, mac experience, some funding possible, ...")
3. publish this ad at MeshCentral (where?)
4. ask for donations for the Mac developer AND for Simon (Simon has to educate the new one)
5. success

I don't know if there are already actions behind the scenes, then sorry for interfering. I'm curious if we report about a plan and its progress at the next monthly community meeting.

@Mac users:

• help to exactly define the Mac main problem
• tell if you would donate to solve it
• do it now :D

[NewUserfromDE]

@veitw If you like see this thread to help describe, what the technical problem regarding Mac is. I think it's something like Wayland change under Linux. I have to rehear the meetings via recordings. It's always the same: Define a problem, suggest solutions, choose one.

[veitw]

I am sorry but I neither use a Mac nor do I have access to one to have a closer look into, but in the Old Days^tm before abandoning MC for Mac management, the Mac admins told me about the following issues (they also told me they already reported them to the Github):

• plist matching problems (this is some x86 vs. ARM issue, if I remember correctly), where it needs to be only "meshagent" for one and a FQDN (I think) for the other to match, and updating the agent overwrote it
• (not sure if also related to plist issue, maybe separate issue connected to some system defense solution, start-up order, ...) meshagent only working directly after being installed, but no longer after rebooting the system, then the agent process is running but does not connect to MC
• meshagent requires a software signature to be handled correctly, but this had to be done manually on a Mac everytime before distributing via MC, also it was insecure because, in contrast to the Windows binary, the Mac binary did not support configuration lockdown when signing
• if permissions (screen recording, text/pointer input resp. accessibility) are missing, and in contrast to other management solutions, meshagent did not guide the user through the steps to give it the required permissions (opening the system settings windows, showing instructions what to do and where to click, ...)

[veitw]

* (not sure if also related to plist issue, maybe separate issue connected to some system defense solution, start-up order, ...) meshagent only working directly after being installed, but no longer after rebooting the system, then the agent process is running but does not connect to MC

When thinking about this, this could also be some kind of network context issue; for security reasons, unless required to help a roadwarrior user with VPN problems, the MC server is only reachable via a VPN that is started by the user.

I am not proficient in macOS/Darwin networking, but I know it supports network contexts. So maybe meshagent is not able to connect to the server because it is started before the VPN connection is set up, and it either stays in the network context as assigned at start-up or cannot access the VPN because the VPN runs in user/desktop context but meshagent is started in system context.

[veitw]

Already before that, general bad packaging was also an issue, because it was far from the current standards at that time, and caused issues. I do not know what die exact issues were, but I suppose they interfered with the software distribution system used in those days.
This was also already reported, if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, that admin is no longer affiliated with the company.