Q100001: Guide to diagnosing issues with connections or troubleshooting authentication with desktop Manager application

Connecting to or diagnosing connections using the desktop manager application is outlined in this article. The desktop manager application can be installed on the same machine that is running the JobServer.NET service, as well as it can be install on a separate stand-alone machine that can remotely connect to and manage the JobServer.NET installation.

The JobServer.NET service is managed using the desktop manager application. The manager application uses the same authentication methods that the Microsoft Windows operating system uses. When a machine is a member of a network domain, then the login for the application will be using a network account that has permissions to manange the JobServer installation. If the machine is a stand-alone machine, not a domain member, then it uses the local accounts on the machine. By default, the accounts with permission to access the JobServer installation will be accounts that belong to the administrators group on the domain or on the local machine.

By default, if you have not added any other account to the administrators group, then the only account that would have permission to manage the JobServer installation, would be the default administrator account. To login to the manager application, enter the same credentials as you would use on your Microsoft Windows network, or local machine. All authentication happens locally on your machine, or inside your network on your responding Active Directory domain controller. If you use an account that does not have administrator level access, then you should see a response right away that indicates the account you are using does not have permission. If you are seeing such a message, then the manager application is communicating with the JobServer installation on the server, and you will need to use an account with administrator level access as outlined above. For configuring access for accounts that you do not want to assign administrator access to, see the article on setting up permission groups for JobServer.NET.

If you see any other type of communication error, the most likely reason would be you have a locally installed firewall or anti-virus type of application that is blocking access to the server. In such cases, you would need to find out how to open access to port 7901 on your server in order to allow the manager application to connect to the installed JobServer.NET service. The steps for this will vary depending on the installed firewall or anti-virus application you are using.

For security purposes, repeated attempts to login may trigger the account or source of the attempts from being temporarily locked out. If an account or source is locked out, no further attempts will work to login until the lockout period expires.