Strange happenings after installing VNC server
 

I have been running the VNC viewer on my RH9 machine for some time, and today I thought I'd set up the server as well. I installed it using Synaptic, and configured the server following the instructions at Fedora News.

The good news is that I can connect to the server, and get a display of my GNOME desktop (I expected not to see GNOME) on a remote machine. I can even tunnel it through SSH, which I really wanted to get working for future use.

The bad news: A couple of strange things have been happening since I installed the server. One (which may not be connected with VNC) is that a second icon has appeared on my desktop for the FAT32 partition I share with Win98. That is, there are now two icons - "win" and "win (2)" - when there was only one before. There is still only one entry in /etc/fstab for this partition - anyone know how I can get rid of the second icon, or how it appeared at all?

Also, after connecting to the server remotely, my desktop theme setup reverted to Bluecurve for the application windows (not the window borders - the stuff inside), and it took two reboots to get back what I had before. Even now, a couple of icons are not what they were before - if this is going to happen to my desktop when I use VNC, I'd rather leave it (VNC) alone!

Can anyone suggest what might be going on?

Many thanks,
Tim.

A day or two later, and my desktop is still behaving strangely. When I choose GNOME themes, the application window decorations (inside the windows, not the title bar) are not showing up, instead defaulting to Bluecurve. Even stranger, if I run the Gimp, it does show the full decoration!

Maybe this is significant: I ran a "ps aux | grep vnc", and got this:

tim 6263 0.3 1.2 7992 6220 ? S 17:38 0:01 Xvnc :1 -desktop
X -httpd /usr/share/vnc/classes -auth /home/tim/.Xauthority -geometry 1024x768 -depth 8 -rfbwait 120000 -rfbauth /home/tim/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5901 -fp unix/:7100

Why VNC has decided to run at 1024x768, I have no idea, as my native res is 1280x1024 - could this be why I'm finding my desktop rearranged for no apparent reason?

Hope someone can help - I'd rather not get rid of VNC altogether, but I will if these desktop hassles keep up! :mad:

Thanks for any help... :)

Tim

Look through your vncserver script for the line:

$geometry = "1024x768";

Vnc sets this to save bandwidth (on my install it defaulted to 640x480), but you can change it.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere