Thanks for the post, but that didn't do the trick. Figured I'd share with you what we've found so far...

After trying so many different things to get VNC to work properly, I decided to go back and do a fresh install of RHEL5 to see if I had missed anything. One thing I noticed during install was that I did not select a lot of the X11 options. So under X11 servers I selected all and completed the install and then followed these steps:

1. Set the VNC password as root from terminal window
2. Opened ports 5900/5901 in the firewall (I'm not sure this was necessary)
3. Tried the gui system-pref-rdp options again which allows you to log into VNC with libVNCserver but still had the same inability to log in once I logged out of VNC.
4. Undid step 3
5. Went back to the RHEL4 style of VNC setup and edited the /etc/X11/xorg.conf to include:
A section called “Module” (before end section) add the line -
Load “vnc”. You can put this all on one line, or as shown below:
Section "Module"
Load "vnc"
EndSection
In the section called “screen” (before end section) add the line –
Option “passwordfile” “/root/.vnc/passwd”

Now VNC 'works'. We can log in and log out with our VNC viewer (latest ultra-VNC version) with an X11 connection just like we do on every CentOS and RHEL4 server we have, but the emulation is rough. It looks great at first, but once you open a window and close it you will start seeing leftover chunks of video from whatever you did last. You can drag a window around to refresh
but that gets old. The log-in log-out feature works properly.

We've been looking around for a solution for the last few days for the emulation problem but have come up empty. Tried change res/refresh rates, and several other things to no avail.

So, if any of you get a chance to set up VNC like I described and can figure out the refresh problem...that would be awesome!

So, has anyone else tried to set up VNC on RHEL 5 yet, besides me?

As a side note, I tried the NoMachine program and there is no problem with emulation when connected to the server from my Windows box. Only problem is that you cannot use NoMachine as root user, only a regular user.

There are millions of ways to perform remote administration, google "remote administration" or something...

Thanks, but I'm definitely looking to use VNC in this case.

BTW, I've been to Cape Town and it a pretty cool place. Went to Table Mtn, drank some Castle beer, etc etc.

So has anyone here finally tinkered with VNC on RHEL5

At home I use realvnc to connect from openSUSE to XP (XP runs realVNC server in user mode and SUSE is running vncviewer) - in SUSE I just go to a console and type in the command 'vncviewer' and I'm then presented with a vnc dialogue box asking for the host to connect to (ie. ip or hostname) - I enter my xp box ip and it then prompts for the password - I supply the correct password and then I'm into my XP machine without a hitch. It was very easy to setup.

At work I essentially do the opposite - I'm using XP to vnc into a local (ie. both are on the same LAN) Slackware machine via ssh. On XP I run PuTTY as my ssh client and set it up to connect to the Slackware box. Once I connect and authenticate I'm at a shell command prompt - from the shell I launch an Xvnc server (on the Slack box) - on XP I have tightvnc client running - same routine - launch tightvnc client on XP and tell it to connect to my Slack box ip - enter login credentials - done - Slack desktop is up and running on my XP. This second method took some tinkering around but it works nicely now.

Long and the short of it is there's a number of different ways to remote back and forth from Lin to Win and vice versa - some better and more secure than others it seems.