Asus Laptop Unable To Pair With MacBook Air In Visual Studio, "An unexpected error occurred while checking the SSH configuration..."

Question

This is an error I have only observed with the two machines I mention in this issue - an Asus Q406DA AMD Ryzen 5-based laptop running Windows 11 (issue occurred with Windows 10 also) and a MacBook Air running Big Sur (2020 machine). I do not observe this error connecting with Dell desktop systems with Intel processors.

All I'm trying to do is to connect/pair the Windows 11 laptop over a network connection (wireless or ethernet; doesn't matter, symptoms are the same) to the MacBook Air using the "Pair To Mac" feature in the toolbar to allow Xamarin to remotely utilize the Mac as a server for generating executable iOS code and run on an iPhone connected to the MacBook Air.

Upon clicking on the "Pair To Mac" toolbar button, the Pair To Mac dialog window appears, recognizing the MacBook Air on the network at a particular IP address. Double-clicking on the Mac entry, or right-clicking on the entry and clicking "Connect...", or clicking the "Connect..." button in the lower portion of the dialog all produce the same messages in the Xamarin console:

Broker 16.11.000.190 started successfully
Successfully connected to Local Broker
Starting IDB Local Agent...
Checking IDB.Local 16.11.000.190 installation...
Starting IDB.Local 16.11.000.190 in port 56569...
IDB.Local 16.11.000.190 started successfully
Successfully started IDB Local Agent
iTunes has not been found. Please ensure to have a valid iTunes installation in order to communicate with Apple devices in Windows
Apple Provisioning Error: Password for account smallscreensw@hotmail.com was deleted from Keychain. Please remove and add this account again.
SetSelectedDeviceAsync BEST Local Device
Checking host configuration for connecting to '192.168.1.32'...
Checking SSH configuration...
Checking host configuration for connecting to '192.168.1.32'...
Starting disconnection from 192.168.1.32...
Starting disconnection from 192.168.1.32...
The connection to '192.168.1.32' has been finished
An unexpected error occurred while checking the SSH configuration of '192.168.1.32:22'

I have tried updating the Mac, updating Visual Studio (it happens for 2019, 2022 Preview and 2022 Release Candidate versions), trying an ethernet connection instead of wireless (it happens both ways), rebooting both systems, and even changing out the hard drive.

The interesting thing about this problem is that it didn't use to happen. I had a 2012 MacBook (the lower-level Mac notebook with the white body) and never had an issue connecting until I switched to a 2020 MacBook Air running Big Sur. (The 2012 MacBook originally had Snow Leopard, then was upgraded to Mountain Lion, Yosemite, High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina (the last version of OS X available for this backlevel machine.) I never observed this issue with any of the other versions of OS X, although over time, performance began to bog down until it was more or less impractical (spurring the purchase of the new Big Sur machine).

I have absolutely no idea as to what may be happening. My first thought was maybe it's an AMD vs Intel chip thing but, as I stated, I have been able to use "Pair To Mac" before. I have never had issues with pinging to check for network connectivity (never any lost packets), and can manually run an SSH command in a terminal window on either system. I even went to the point of creating a special rule for the particular IP address at which the Mac is connected to allow incoming and outgoing connections (the pair operation apparently happens at port 22 but the rule allows all ports without distinction).

As a workaround I copy the Xamarin code (C#, XAML, etc.) directly to the Mac and work with Visual Studio for Mac, but I'd rather be doing this from the Windows laptop with the MacBook Air functioning as the server.

I searched online for similar conditions other users have experienced, but never saw anything matching this, hence my opening this problem ticket.

To aid in diagnosing the root cause of this problem/bug, I have created a OneDrive folder at this publicly available URL (read-only mode):

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuAciPLtk4WAhwSRexATUxGZbFQj?e=32b3CN

Here's what's in the folder:

Asus Laptop Specifications.txt A system report on the state of the Windows laptop at the time the condition occurred.

MacBook Air Laptop Specifications.txt A system report on the state of the Mac OS laptop at the time the condition occurred.

Screenshot SSH failure Image_20211107_013742.png An image of the failure messages from Xamarin in Visual Studio.

Xamarin Output Messages.txt The output messages from the above screenshot, in text form.

Unexpected SSH error connecting with MacAgent in Visual Studio Video_20211107_014021.mp4 A short video demonstrating the condition and the ensuing error message.

Xamarin Forms is a fine product, but this is a real head-scratcher.

THANKS!!!!

Answer 1

I seem to get the An unexpected error occurred while checking the SSH configuration error when trying to pair VS 2022 to a Mac whenever I update the network password on my PC.

The following steps (based on a combination of different suggestions in this VS community post) have worked for me to get rid of this error:

1. Exit all instances of VS.

2. Delete everything from these 2 folders on the PC:

   %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\Xamarin
   %LOCALAPPDATA%\Xamarin\MonoTouch

3. Open VS and attempt to pair with the Mac.
   a. You will be prompted for your Mac username and password.
   b. The first pair attempt may fail. Wait a few seconds and try to pair again.

The above steps work with both the Xamarin version of VS 2022 and the MAUI preview version of VS 2022.