Running Linux Mint, 12 or 13.. probably 12.

Headless box, with Mate.

When I run vnc4server and connect to it, everything works fine, but it opens a slim x window manager session with a terminal.

I want it to start a full desktop session. I tried uncommented the 2 lines in .vnc/xstartup as directed in the file, but that didn't work: it failed because /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc wasn't executable, so i modified the exec bit and then it still didn't work as expected. It was a very minimal session with only the desktop icons, no nice session colors and no panel.

also tried adding to ~/.vnc/xstartup :

gnome-session &
gnome-panel &

But to no avail.

How can I get this working as I would like?

/edit: I know i tried it using gnome-session etc but i want it to run mate, thanks
running:
$ mate-session &
$ mate-panel &

from a terminal, with the DISPLAY var pointed at the vnc server gives me close to the desired result (i suppose i would want a more robust session), but i cannot use synaptic for example, because it attempts to get auth through the terminal, and i need a cleaner setup than this.

this also has the side-effect of not replacing the existing window manager, so please help me
~/.vnc/xstartup (notice the 2 commented lines, i tried uncommenting but left orig here)
Modifying the file to this seems to give me the result i want,

If you know how to make vnc4server use the system default that would be ideal this way I won't need to change the script if i switch environments

Marking as solved, solution is in the original post.