im running RealVnc on red hat 7.3 and trying to vnc into it from my win xp box. i start the server w/ 'vncserver' and get the following....

[root@peter .vnc]# vncserver

New 'X' desktop is peter:1

Starting applications specified in /root/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /root/.vnc/peter:1.log

if i use 'peter:1' in windows vncviewer it works fine, but if i use the ip addy of the machine '192.168.1.3:1' it doesnt.

im going to be (once i have it working) logging in from work to my home linux box so i have to have it work by the ip addy. can someone tell me what i need to do to get this working?

thnx in adv

This might seem like a really stupid question, and forgive me if it is...but is your VNC server ACTUALLY 192.168.1.3?

And if it is, are you sure its listening on port 1? (by default I thought it was in the 5000 range or something)

AND third, check the syntax for windows, because I know in linux when you use vncviewer to specify a port, you have to use two ':'

ie: 192.168.1.3::1

Hope this helps.

This isn't a solution, but merely a workaround, it's still worth a shot.

Search for the filename "lmhost" on your computer and open it up in notepad.

Your version of windows you are running determins the actual filename and location. On my windows XP machine it is "C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts.sam" and in older versions (95 - 98) I believe it is just C:\windows\lmhosts.

Read the comments and you can understand it.

Add 111.222.333.444 peter

where 111.222.333.444 is your ip addy <tab> and peter is your netbios name.

Save and reboot.

You can not connect normally (by netbios name) from outside the firewall and it will work fine. Make SURE that the IP address you map to the netbios name is NOT a private IP (aka 10.x.x.x or 192.x.x.x) and instead a fully routable IP address. That might be part of your problem. You can only connect to private IP addresses within collision domains. If you cross a router, you can't talk to private IP addresses because they don't forward.

The lmhosts file is simply ip address to netbios name mapping. Your mileage may vary. Good luck!

Make sure the port is open also....

From Windows you could use Port Scanner.

sorry for the late reply guys, i had to go out of town and didnt know it.

anywho got the problem partially fixed. i was wanting to give mandrake 9.1 a try anyway so i installed that. running kde. with the same setup it connects by ip address now. tcaptain that is my local ip addy for that machine yes. and the :1 runs it on the display mode that the server is running on.

but my problem now is all i see is a grey screen. no icons or anything. i start the server w/....
vncserver -geometry 800x600 -depth 16

my xstartup is....

#!/bin/sh
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/ .Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
gnome-session &

whats wrong w/ my setup to make me not see anything.
thnx in adv. guys.

oh & btw. i know im using kde and my file is starting gnome, but i dont know the command for kde. all the howtos ive read show it for gnome

This is a common problem. By default, VNC uses TWM which is a horribly minimalist window manager. To fix this just add the start command for the window manager you want at the end of your xstartup file. So if you want KDE, just add startkde & at the end.

well that helped a little. i can see my background but thats it. the mouse in in a shape of an 'X' and the screen will stay like that for about 3 seconds and then flash grey. then go back to the background. repeating this over and over. thats it. ideas?

well i let the vnc window on my xp box continue running flashing like that and after about 5 minutes it popped up and error....

"Could not start process Unable to create io-slave: Too many open files"

what would cause this?

When you added startkde & to your xstartup file, did you also comment out the gnome-session & line? It should look something like

#gnome-session &
startkde &


Also, did you shutdown vncserver and restart it after you made the changes to xstartup?

i deleted the gnome line completely. added the 'startkde &' and then rebooted.

anyother ideas what might be causing this?

Could you have a look through your VNC log and see if anything interesting is there? In my experience, setting up your xstartup that way should work.

Also, I just noticed that your ultimate goal is to access your linux box from work. If that is true, you REALLY need to investigate running VNC through SSH. VNC by itself doesn't have any security. The second thing is that you REALLY want to get away from running this as root. It is much, much safer to run as a user and then su when you need root priviledges.

im at work now, ill check the log tonight. i was actually planning on running through ssh, im just tryin to get it working locally 1st. and honestly i didnt realize i ran it as root. i su'ed and left it on i guess. thnx for the tips ill reply again this evening.

here an excerpt from my log. can someone tell me what this means.

15/07/03 10:45:22 Xvnc version 3.3.7 - built Feb 28 2003 18:27:24
15/07/03 10:45:22 Copyright (C) 2002-2003 RealVNC Ltd.
15/07/03 10:45:22 Copyright (C) 1994-2000 AT&T Laboratories Cambridge.
15/07/03 10:45:22 All Rights Reserved.
15/07/03 10:45:22 See http://www.realvnc.com for information on VNC
15/07/03 10:45:22 Desktop name 'X' (Peter.Eros:1)
15/07/03 10:45:22 Protocol version supported 3.3
15/07/03 10:45:22 Listening for VNC connections on TCP port 5901
15/07/03 10:45:22 Listening for HTTP connections on TCP port 5801
15/07/03 10:45:22 URL http://Peter.Eros:5801
startkde: Starting up...
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
kbuildsycoca running...
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Server has no DPMS extension
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding

15/07/03 10:45:34 Got connection from client 192.168.1.2
15/07/03 10:45:34 Protocol version 3.5
15/07/03 10:45:34 Ignoring minor version mismatch
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
kicker: crashHandler called
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
*** kdesktop (2375) got signal 11
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
15/07/03 10:45:42 Pixel format for client 192.168.1.2:
15/07/03 10:45:42 16 bpp, depth 16, little endian
15/07/03 10:45:42 true colour: max r 31 g 63 b 31, shift r 11 g 5 b 0
15/07/03 10:45:42 no translation needed
15/07/03 10:45:42 Using hextile encoding for client 192.168.1.2
15/07/03 10:45:42 rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type 3
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
WARNING: KDE detected X Error: BadDrawable (invalid Pixmap or Window parameter) \x09
Major opcode: \x0e
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-2396' to 'kicker'
ERROR: KUniqueApplication: DCOP communication error!
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
*** kdesktop (2409) got signal 11
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
*** kdesktop (2429) got signal 11
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
*** kdesktop (2439) got signal 11
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":1.0".
Xlib: extension "RENDER" missing on display ":1.0".
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding

can anybody help w/ this?

I was hoping that there was going to be some crystal clear evidence in the log (and maybe there is and I'm just not bright enough to spot it).

I did a little googling on the Xlib errors and found 2 things.

1) a LOT of people run into something like this and
2) it seems to be related to NVDIA drivers

You are probably going to want to do some googling on your own, but a fairly common reccomendation was to get into your XF86Config file and uncomment (or add) the Load "glx" line in the Modules section of the file.

Of course this begs the question of why doesn't this rear its ugly head when you are NOT running KDE over VNC.

There was one other thread that piqued my interest. The upshot is that the user was starting VNC from within a Gnome session and subsequently the VNC Gnome session was all garbled. In this thread the solution was the user logged into Gnome as root, popped open a console then used su to log into his regular account and start VNC. When he did that, the VNC Gnome session was fine.

You could try either the above approach or maybe just use ssh to log in and start vncserver.