Color problems with Slack 12.1/tightvnc server

jimkalb · 06-07-2008, 04:50 PM

[UPDATE: the following problem went away when I removed the SlackBuilds package and installed the one from linuxpackages.net. Very strange.]

I built tightvnc using the script at SlackBuilds.org, installed it on my Slackware 12.1 box, and installed the Windows version of tightvnc on my Windows 2000 box.

With the Windows server and Slack client it works perfectly.

With the Slack server and Windows client there's a problem with colors. No matter what I do, I get a grey crosshatch background and unreadable black-on-black menus.

I've experimented a bit with the .vnc/xstartup file. The default is:

xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
twm &

That doesn't make sense for me because I don't have twm. So I've substituted fvwm and blackbox for twm and the same result. The window manager comes up and I get the xterm but it's all pretty unusable because the menus are unreadable.

If I change

xsetroot -solid grey

to

xsetroot -solid steelblue, it's the same. Ditto if I comment out

xrdb $HOME/.Xresources

I tried doing it with 8-bit color on both sides and still the same. At times there are hints of color but it's mostly unreadable blacks and grays.

Any ideas?

gefst · 08-02-2008, 01:50 PM

If I understand the problem correctly what you need to do is edit the script.

/usr/bin/vncserver

uncomment the colorPath line and set the path to
"/usr/share/X11/rgb"

also you will probably need to comment the first instance of fontPath that says something like "unix:/7100" and uncomment the second instance three lines below, under the line "Here is another example ..." (just uncomment, you don't need any other changes).

Propably the slackbuild that was used to compile the package you downloaded took care of these changes.

jimkalb · 08-04-2008, 04:05 PM

Thanks much! I should have looked at the files in the package to see if there were editable scripts or configuration files. The practical problem went away, but it's always good to know why a problem was there.