Mac – Builtin VNC stops working after waking headless Mac mini from sleep (black screen)

mac-miniremote desktopsleep-wake

I'm running a Mac mini (late 2012) with OS X 10.8.2 as a media center PC and streaming server. It's not running 24/7 – instead I'm using a schedule to wake it up in the evening and putting it back to sleep at midnight. So far, so good.

For some reason the built-in VNC server stops working when the Mac wakes up while the attached screen is turned off. I can login and can also move the cursor but the screen remains black.

A workaround is to use RealVNC but I prefer to use the built-in VNC service since it doesn't cost extra money and has better multi-user support.

Best Answer

This was eligible for me: edit /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Kernel Flags</key>
    <string>darkwake=0</string>
</dict>
</plist>

and restart your mac. Mountain Lion forces me to enter password twice but it wakes up and works.

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