Enabling ARD Remotely

From Mac OS X Server FAQ

Apple is still shipping Xserves with ARD version 1.x installed by default. This version has a kickstart utility to get you up and running. We can do this because Apple had the foresight to allow SSH connections to your server right out of the box!

• Connect to your server over SSH
• Move into the directory that holds the kickstart program:

cd '/System/Library/CoreServices/ARD Agent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart'

• Activate ARD sharing, allowing access to all users
  

sudo ./kickstart -activate -configure -access -on restart ?~@~Sagent

• Grant full access to users ?~@~\admin, thor�?, then restart the agent and menu extra

sudo ./kickstart -activate -configure -access -on -users admin,thor -privs -all -restart -agent ?~@~Smenu

• Since you now have admin and thor configured with full ARD access, you can disable access to all users, and then re-enable it for only admin and thor:

sudo ./kickstart -activate -configure -access ?~@~Soff
sudo ./kickstart -configure -access -on -users "admin, thor"

Now you can update your server to ARD 2 by connecting to it with the Remote Desktop admin application.

Once you have updated to ARD 2 it's interesting to note that the path to kickstart changes to the following:

/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart

An alternative way to start ARD is by using SystemStarter:

sudo SystemStarter start ?~@~\Remote Desktop�?es