Apples remote desktop service is great and it comes in handy, but what happens when you’re 5000 miles away from your desktop, only to find that remote desktop is turned off. Dooohhhh. Well here is a quick tip to turn the damn thing on and off in a second through a remote ssh connection. To turn on the service, ssh to your machine and issue the following commands:$ cd /Library/PreferencesAnd once you’re done, you can turn it off by issuing the following through an ssh session:
$ echo -n enabled > com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd$ cd /Library/PreferencesI’m pretty sure that this only works under Leopard (10.5+), so if you’ve got Tiger you need to look for an alternate way. I don’t have access to a Tiger machine so I can not guarantee that it works or not.
$ rm com.apple.ScreenSharing.launchd