(I thought I might have posted this somewhere before but I can't find it here so maybe here it is again)

I've used Apple Remote Desktop quite a lot over the years. I occasionally ran into a problem that's become a much more serious issue at my new job. The issue is that computer lists disappear permanently, for no apparent reason. It's been a very hard bug to track. A list would just be GONE when I would look for it.

Usually it's a *shrug* and make it again. But now I need the list for a different reason. I have DOZENS of "jobs" that are tied to a single list, "WORKING". Since ARD doesn't let me drag handfuls of computers onto say, a copy job or a shell script to run it, I drag them into the WORKING group and then run the script. The script's target is just the WORKING group. (other remote management software such as Altiris allows for easy drag and drop to run jobs)

The problem was that WORKING disappeared. GONE. Funny thing is, I could open up any of the scripts or copies etc that used it, and there it was, and I could run it fine. The problem is, I had no way to EDIT the list anymore, which was a critical part of my workflow. I knew ARD still had it, it was there in every job, but I scoured my many folders and was unable to find it.

Tear apart the plist. Easier said than done, it's a big momma, and I only manage a fairly meager 100 macs here. Found it. The plist is a moderately complicated setup, and uses unique IDs to key around, and functions a lot like a relational database. There's an array of computer lists, an array of saved shell commands, an array of copy jobs etc. In a copy job, there's a list of the targets of the copy job, referenced only by the target's ID. So you just change the computer list, and all the jobs that use it follow along nicely.

The problem I determined was that the shell and copy jobs were referring to WORKING, and WORKING was in the array of computer lists, but it was NOT in the "list of things in the sidebar". The simple fix was to determine the unique id of WORKING, and simply add another entry to the sidebar array.

After an initially very frustrating fight with cfprefsd, I managed to get my list back. (that's a WHOLE 'nother can of worms)

And then it happened again. And again. And again. Googling around I found sparse reports of people having the same issue. I FINALLY nailed it down, it's triggered by a very specific drag of an object in the sidebar, one position up I think. What's so insidious about this is it doesn't disappear right away. After the deadly drag, it's still there and accessible and shows no signs of problems, UNTIL YOU QUIT ARD. The data structure isn't saved properly into the plist, and on next launch, the list has vanished. That's why it was being such a ghost with me.

I'm curious to see if anyone else here is having this issue. After maybe a DOZEN very unpleasant digs in plists to fix it, I finally wrote a complex shell script to identify and fix the problem automatically. On the off-chance anyone googling for this nasty gremlin winds up here, let me know and I will get it to you.


I work for the Department of Redundancy Department