OK first off, I'm a Linux newbie and may appear to be diving in a little too deep but unfortunately I don't have much choice.

I currently have 2 w2k boxes on my network (an ADSL router) and control them remotely from work using TightVNC - I need a Linux box set up similarly.

So far I have installed MDK9.2 on an old P3/450. It has a 20g drive and 384Mb ram so hopefully the spec is OK. Gnome is the installed GUI which has allowed me to setup the networking correctly - such that I can access the shares on my w2k PCs, print though my network print-server and surf the net.

Before I can remotely control the Linux box, I need to configure TightVNC - this is where I'm confused. MDK 9.2 appears to have installed TightVNC, however when I run VNCServer, all I see is a small window + a Terminal session ????????

Ideally, I'd like TightVNC to run at startup, hopefully enabling two sessions - one for root & another for a normal user (i.e. the one I would normally use).

I'm very familiar with Windows but utterly clueless with Linux... unfortunately I really need to sort this out BEFORE I can start to learn about it.

Can anyone help ?

When the VNC issue is resolved I'll move onto firewalls...Doh !

I don't know if you know this, but VNC on Linux does not share the X server, it is an X server in its own right. You can however share your X session using the VNC protocol. You can also configure VNC to start two desktop environments without starting X on the Linux Box.

If you would like to share your Linux display like the VNC implementation on Windows you should take a look at http://www.tjansen.de/krfb/. or http://forum.hexonet.com/. Otherwise you need to configure VNC, details are found in the manual for VNC.

I hope this helps,

Marcel

Thanks Marcel,

I don't want VNC operating in the same way as Windoze - I hoped for 2 VNCServers, 1 as root and another as a 'user'... then I connect to whichever I need at the time.

I had hoped for a simple script I could drop in because I'm pretty clueless with Linux - I just don't get the time at home, hence needing to get VNC up & running so that I can learn while I'm at work

Ok, here's a possible solution for your problem:

open a terminal and start vncserver if you have not already done so. The startup files will be created. You need to do this as the user you want the server running as.

Go to /home/user/.vnc and edit the file xstartup, mine now looks like this:
#!/bin/sh

xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
#xsetroot -solid grey
#xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
#twm &
/usr/bin/startxfce4 &

when i start vncserver now, it will start xfce4. If you want gnome you can do the following:
keep only the #!/bin/sh and the xrdb .... line in the xstartup file, leave the editor and type: which gnome-session >> ./xstartup
or
which startkde >> ./xstartup
and after that:
edit the xstartup file again and add an & after the last line.

The only thing you need to do now is put vnc in the startup scripts. If you need help with that let me know. First try to get the windowmanager of your choice running.

Marcel

Update:

I succeeded in running VNCViewer on the Linux box, taking control of one of my w2k boxes, however I was unable to get it working the other way.

IIRC MDK9.2 installed TightVNC into /usr/x11???/bin. There is a 'vncservers' file which I edited, this didn't appear to work.

I'm getting more baffled by the hour