I've got a machine with mandrake 9.0 that will be running without a monitor or mouse. I want to remote into it with vnc but I don't know how to start vnc during startup. I've added the line /usr/bin/perl vncserver to rc.local but that did jack. I also tried the line /usr/bin/vncserver but that didn't do anything either. /usr/bin is where vncserver, vncpasswd, vncconnect, vncviewer, and Xvnc are so I don't know why it doesn't work. So if anyone could tell me how to set up vnc to start when linux boots up it would very appreciated.

First start it manually so that you can set the password with something similar to:
vncserver :2

The ":2" is the display number. You should then be able to add this line to your rc script.

Add what line to my rc script? And how should it look in my rc script? I'm a newb and the rc script has a bunch of coding in it so is it just supposed to be below all of the codeing? /usr/bin/perl vncserver :2?

oh yea also I'm assuming that rc.local is the place I need to add the command line to run vncserver during startup.

Anyone have any advice?

I'm assuming you have x configured?

Not sure about your distro, but I think it should be very similar. On my BSD machine, the vncserver binary is located in the usr/x11r6/bin. It needs to be able to properly initialize x. So that needs to be configured before getting vnc to work.

Just running vncserver from a command prompt should initialize it.

Simply add that line of code to the rc config line in the /etc directory.

I am having the same problem!!. Hope you got the answer. I am putting the following line in the rc.local file

/usr/local/bin vncserver :1 -name myserver -depth 16 -geometry 800x600

This wirks perfectly from the command prompt but does not work from the rc.local file. Someone out there must be using VNC to control a headless server in Linux. Please Help!!!

Thanks

bumpity bump

running this via your rc.local script will make it run as root, not as your normal user... if you want it to run as a normal user then try using

I'm trying to do the same thing as dipper17. I want vncserver to run during startup with a pc that doesn't have a monitor or mouse. I'm also a huge newbie to linux to if you have an answer I need a step by step to understand it. Thanks for all of the advice so far.

Well, I haven't heard of vnc but Webmin is a good remote program. All you need is a browser, preferable with Java-plugin. I always use webmin for all my configuration-needs. The only thing I do from the server is installing rpms.

vnc is an excellent remote program that allows you to do anything remotely and its a multiplatform programs so I can use it to remote into multiple windows and linux machines from one location

and its free