I usually remotely connect to a client server to make adjustment via the CLI. Occasionally I have to login into the desktop to understand some issues that my customer are trying to explain via Vino-Server. I have notice that sometimes when I attempt to login via ssh, I sometimes can see that a user has not logged into the GUI desktop which means that I cannot login into the remote desktop session to resolve any issues via the GUI. My question is:

How can I remotely login via ssh and start a gnome or kde session for the user account that I am trying to resolve his or her issue? I hope I said that right?

I think I got it. You want to make the client box do what it would do if the user was there typing his or her password into gdm, kdm or xdm, then start vino-server and connect to it, such that you can do stuff to the GUI.

It should be fairly straightforward.
- become root
- /etc/init.d/gdm start
- start a VNC server (vino, x11vnc) on the just created X instance
- connect with your favorite client and log in.
- start a VNC server in the logged-in user's session
- connect with your favorite client
- profit

Run programs in the X server by running root@client~$ DISPLAY=:0 xterm, replacing :0 with the name of the display you want to run on (ps -Fe | grep X should give a hint), and xterm with the command you want to run.

Alternatively, become the user and run startx. If they have a sucky X startup script, run gnome-session manually.

There are some ideas for how to connect via VNC to the GDM/KDM login greeter here:

http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/faq....isplay-manager

These assume you have the required permissions.

There are also ways to do what you want but they avoid using the physical graphics hardware: e.g. vncserver, xdmcp (e.g. Xnest), or nx.

I will give it a shot, many thanks