Re: Off Topic : VNC

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.

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).

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".

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. :-)

--
Billy