GL through VNC not working; suggestions?

BrianK · 08-05-2002, 03:18 PM

I'm trying to run some graphics apps through VNC. I don't really care about their performance, I just need them to run.

If I try to run the app, I get:
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".

If I, then, set my display environment variable to <my ip>:1.0 (1.0 is the display I'm using for VNC), I get:
Cannot open the display. Is your DISPLAY environment variable set?
Server initialization failed. Sorry.

I'm running vncserver on RedHat 7.2 (192.168.0.4) - I installed with the vnc rpm. I'm running vncviewer on Windows 2000 (192.168.0.3)

any help would be great.

thanks.

Thymox · 08-05-2002, 06:09 PM

You won't be able to get GL apps to work over VNC. VNC works by, effectively, taking a screenshot and sending it over the network to the viewer app (which is why it was so quick for them to write *nix/Win32/Mac/Java versions of their viewer software).

If you really want to run VNC, then I would to this:
run vncserver and record what it says on the line that looks like this:
New 'X' desktop is beast.grants.network:2
Then put in the address into your viewer app. You don't need to run it as root.

If you want to run things nice and smoothly, then you should look into running a remote X session. Because X is a server/client based setup (where usually the two run on the same machine), it isn't too difficult (apparently) to serve an X session over the network, and connect to it with a client app... and there are Win32 Xclient apps.

Hope this helps.

BrianK · 08-05-2002, 10:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Thymox
You won't be able to get GL apps to work over VNC. VNC works by, effectively, taking a screenshot and sending it over the network to the viewer app (which is why it was so quick for them to write *nix/Win32/Mac/Java versions of their viewer software).

which would make me think that you could open anything and it would go through the snapshot process... but apparently, my thinking is incorrect.

Quote:

If you really want to run VNC, then I would to this:
run vncserver and record what it says on the line that looks like this:
New 'X' desktop is beast.grants.network:2
Then put in the address into your viewer app. You don't need to run it as root.

I tried this, but came up with the same results. thanks for the tip, though.

Quote:

If you want to run things nice and smoothly, then you should look into running a remote X session. Because X is a server/client based setup (where usually the two run on the same machine), it isn't too difficult (apparently) to serve an X session over the network, and connect to it with a client app... and there are Win32 Xclient apps.

Yeah, it looks like this is the direction I'll need to go. Do you know of any xclients - preferably free?

I've used X-Win32 before, which worked well, but required some sort of setup on the server that I couldn't find any documentation on (admittedly, I didn't look very hard), and is somewhat expensive. I tried cygwin, but ssh didn't come with it and I wasn't sure if I may have been barking up the wrong tree.

Any win32 xclients out there that are nice and easy to use (wishful thinking, I know)?

What about win32 xclients that aren't easy to use?

BrianK · 08-06-2002, 02:57 PM

bump... anyone have a suggestion for an xclient that will run on Windows? I tried axessh with no luck. maybe I need to set something on the linux box so x is forwarded? (I thought that happened automatically).

Thymox · 08-06-2002, 05:52 PM

Unfortunately, XWin32 is the best one that I've heard of. As for Windows ssh clients, there are some around. I've never used one, but if you search this site you should find some links or info. As for why you'd use ssh? The only thing I can think of is so that you can initiate the remote X server... remotely, and then have your XWin32 client connect to it... although would you not want to do this at startup?