VNC Server on CentOS - Viewer on XP
 

I have the task of putting VNC server on a CentOS server and putting VNC viewer on my XP machine. I have zero experience on Linux, so I need step by step from downloading to the end. If you have a place to steer me in the right direction, that will work too. Thank you so much.

See and follow: http://fedoranews.org/tchung/vnc/

Note; the default ports for the VNC viewers are different between Linux(5901) and Windows(5900). For the Windows VNC viewer add a colon followed by the number one (1), examples:

<the IP address of the Linux system>:1
192.168.0.111:1

I was able to follow all of that on the CentOS side, but it didn't tell me what I need to do on the Windows side.

I told you, start the vncviewer on the Windows side and enter the IP of the Linux server and add the :1 at the end, example 192.168.0.10:1

it tells me "connection refused" when i try that.

Did you follow the guide??? http://fedoranews.org/tchung/vnc/

yeah, i did everything, i've talked to another guy that said he got his up and going today as well. i dont know what i did, i'm thinking i messed up some code somewhere. i'm reinstalling the OS as i type. thanks for your time.

Firewall Rules
 

If you really tried anything with port and :1 after your linux box ip try disabling your linux firewall by typing

service iptables stop

and try entering into your vnc again.
If the problem will be solved you have to follow these simple steps:

step 1:
open the iptables config
vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Step 2:
Insert this Line:
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5901 -j ACCEPT

Step 3:
enable iptables again
service iptables restart

Hung at the same place but trying to go one more step!
 

Interestingly enough, "vncviewer localhost:2" or "vncviewer 127.0.0.1:2" works but if I try to use the real IP address of the server like "vncviewer 192.168.12.3:2" this fails! The hosts file has a proper entry but yet it fails. How is that explained? My one step further is getting this to work with a Xen virtual machine. I thought that the VM was going to be the tough part but yeah, thought wrong.

Like daylightnetworks said, you prob need to open the port using iptables (firewall).

...

Possible Solution
 

The above steps should work however, you also need to ensure that the vncserver service is started as well. This service is not set to automatically start with your system. You should then be able to connect just fine.

I followed this tutorial it works for me..
freelinuxtutorial.blogspot.com/2011/05/linux-vpn-server-configuration.html