Re: Off Topic : VNC

"Billy Verreynne" <vslabs_at_onwe.co.za> wrote in message news:b5ou3u$g5t$1_at_ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
> Howard J. Rogers wrote:
>
> > So I trawl through Google, and get all sorts of cryptic advice about
> > getting something more decent on display. So, sure enough, I discover a
> > .vnc sub-directory in my home directory, and within that there surely is
a
> > script called xstartup, and in there I replace 'twm' with
'enlightenment'
> > or 'startkde' or any other thing I can think of... and none of it makes
> > the slightest bit of difference. Back on the client PC, I still get
yucky
> > twm.
>
> As others stated, the .vnc dir contains the "autoexec.bat" for a VNC
> session. It states what must be loaded, including which X window manager
> must be used.
>
> Here's the "correct" .vnc/xstartup script for a Red Hat system:
> --
> #!/bin/sh
>
> # Red Hat Linux VNC session startup script
>
> # run the default Red Had xinit script
> exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
> --
>
> This runs xinitrc which is the default X startup script. It does the basic
X
> stuff and then calls /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients. Xclients in turn check for
> your preferred desktop (either Gnome or KDE, with Gnome as the default).
If
> it does not find either, it tries various others.

Bear in mind that this box, when connected to locally, boots up just fine, and loads Gnome (bluecurve) just fine, too.

So now I've just stripped out everything in my Xstartup script, typed in the two lines

#!/bin/sh
exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

...saved it, rebooted the machine, and connected. Guess what? I get twm.

At the command prompt, I type in "exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc", and Lo! Gnome starts. In other words, I can *still* run anything I want manually, but can't get it to do it automatically when I connect from a VNCviewer.

>
> I prefer not to use the above script myself. I've customised it to run
> sawfish as the window manager and pop-up a single xterm window. Then I use
> that xterm to launch whatever X GUI apps I need. The overheads is thus
less
> (no Gnome or KDE desktop stuff). Also helps wrt performance when assessing
> the VNC server remotely via a slow dialup (less graphics and better
> compression).

I don't care about performance at this stage. So long as I can connect to the bugger from one end of the house to the other, I'm happy. And I'm even happier with a front-end I have actually learnt how to use.

>
> Oh yeah. You need to do a shutdown of the VNC server to reload the
startup.
> Do a "vncserver -kill :1" to shutdown the VNC server on display 1. Then
> restart it by simply doing a "vncserver".

Yeah, I've been doing that... although Windows habits die hard, and I took to doing reboots when killing the thing off between attempts to edit xstartup had no effect.

>
> BTW, I also have Windows 2000 running on my Linux box inside VMware. It
too
> has a VNC server.
>
> There's something strangely satisfying about running Microsoft Windows
> inside a virtual machine and then acessing its desktop via a virtual
> session from a remote machine. :-)

It gets very recursive, doesn't it!!

Thanks for the help. I'm still no better off, and I've gotten to the point where I'm ready to give up. But just before I do....

I invoke the vncserver at server boot time with a home-brew script called vncstart, containing the single line "/usr/local/bin/vncserver". That script is stored in /etc/init.d, and is invoked by my rc.local script, just after having set all the Oracle environment variables. I've seen incredibly complicated scripts for controlling boot-time start-ups of vncserver, so I suspect I may have taken a shortcut too far. Any easy advice on better ways to start the thing to begin with also appreciated.

Thanks for taking the trouble...

Regards
HJR Received on Tue Mar 25 2003 - 15:13:20 CST