Hey guys, first off, I love the vnc feature in suse - definitly conencting via web browser on port 5801 - cool stuff. My only question is, can I connect to a session already in progress like when using rdc on windows? I would like to administrate my machine, then close my vnc session without actually closing out what I was doing on the server. Any ideas? btw - I am using tightvnc as my client.

There's several ways to achieve that ... I have installed x11vnc that
I then start from within my .xinitrc file before I run my WM.

If you search here on LQ you'll find ways of doing that with tight
or real VNC as well, but by default those two come up with the "bleak"
naked X with a console.


Cheers,
Tink

Hm, well the thing is I get full kdm/kde and all that jazz (not X+xterm), I just need to connect to an open display.
For example, right now the machine is logged in as a user in kde, running azureus, most likely display 0. If I wanted to gain control of THAT session - display 0, what would be the way to snatch control from something already in use? As it is, my vnc client just hits up the next display, display 1. If I then opened something via vnc on that display, it is lost when I disconnect. I'm really just trying to achieve what rdc already does, snatch control away from the local machine and hand it to the remote client, then hand the session back to local control when the remote admin disconncets. Any ideas?

Similar to my method ...

Just make sure that the xsession on the machine allows
connections from localhost; then you ssh into the box
as the user whose session you want to grab, fire up
x11vnc and off you go ... :)


Cheers,
Tink

Try giving the display free using VNC. That will serve your needs. This can be configured using sax2 (or by Yast Display). You can also password-protect it.

Make sure if you're using it, its on a firewalled internal network. Any VNC variation is not very secure unless behind a different firewall.

A secure idea would be to setup SSH on your remote machine on a random port that only you know, setup VNC the remote machine to only use a local port, from your machine login through SSH something like "ssh -l username <IP> -L 5900:127.0.0.1:5900" This will log in to your remote machine and forward your remote machine's local port 5900 (VNC local port) to your machine. Now with SSH logged in doing nothing, use a remote desktop program that works with VNC and connect to 127.0.0.1 port5900 and you're in to the remote machine over a secure SSH tunnel.

Sounds good - thanx for the info!

-Bill

You can also just use these instructions. Very simple what you are trying to do, that is connect to Display :0. http://www.realvnc.com/products/free/4.1/x0.html

Thanks to everyone, I figured it out. What I did was enable vnc in yast2 (I did that prior to this thread) then enable connect to this display in sax2. You can also set up a password in there for a little security.

Here's my setup now
To connect to the active display, use port 5900 - 5800 for java
To connect to a new display use 5901 - 5801 for java

On windows I use realvnc to connect, I found it to be a great app. In linux krdc is the most refined program I found, and it does rdp too!