Here's the situation:

I connect to my system at home from work via SSH.
I start a vncserver from the shell prompt.
Using vncviewer on my work system, I can connect to it but only get a grey screen.

Here is whats odd. If I type "twm -display :1 &" and "xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop -display :1 &" in my SSH terminal I get a window manager and a term windows to pop up in the vncviewer (as expected).

What's bugging me is that those options are listed in the xstartup file. The same happens if I try to start kde, gnome, or anything else. It bypasses the xstartup and will let me load it from my separate shell via the ssh terminal.

Here is my xstartup file:
#!/bin/sh

if [ -f $HOME/.Xresources ] ; then
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
fi
xsetroot -solid grey50
xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
twm &

I've commented out every line individually at least once, and I've also tried removing the entire if loop and xsetroot lines. Neither solved the problem.

I didn't have these issues when I used VNC when my system was running RedHat so I'm thinking it has something to do with the way Debian stores it's conf files. I know that RedHat had VNC load something at boot and Debian does not. What is was, I do not know because no VNC server was actually started at boot when I ran RedHat. All I know is that if I install VNC from the tar file on RealVNC's website, nothing works. I couldn't even connect to the server. If I install it via apt-get (using dselect) I can connect and things "appear" be be working.

I have changed the permissions on the xstartup file to 755. This was the same as my settings when I ran RedHat as well as on some other systems where I use VNC and it works properly.

Here is the log file generated during my connection. It looks like there is only one error, and I don't know what it means, but since X actually loads, I don't think it is related.

06/08/03 16:05:31 Xvnc version 3.3.3r2+tight1.2.2
06/08/03 16:05:31 Copyright (C) AT&T Laboratories Cambridge.
06/08/03 16:05:31 All Rights Reserved.
06/08/03 16:05:31 See http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc for information on VNC
06/08/03 16:05:31 Desktop name 'X' (voyager:1)
06/08/03 16:05:31 Protocol version supported 3.3
06/08/03 16:05:31 Listening for VNC connections on TCP port 5901

06/08/03 16:05:44 Got connection from client XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
06/08/03 16:05:44 Protocol version 3.3
06/08/03 16:05:46 Pixel format for client XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:
06/08/03 16:05:46 8 bpp, depth 8
06/08/03 16:05:46 true colour: max r 7 g 7 b 3, shift r 0 g 3 b 6
06/08/03 16:05:46 no translation needed
06/08/03 16:05:46 rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding 16
06/08/03 16:05:46 Using hextile encoding for client 128.205.118.99
06/08/03 16:07:39 Client XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX gone
06/08/03 16:07:39 Statistics:
06/08/03 16:07:39 key events received 52, pointer events 235
06/08/03 16:07:39 framebuffer updates 113, rectangles 291, bytes 329577
06/08/03 16:07:39 hextile rectangles 291, bytes 329577
06/08/03 16:07:39 raw bytes equivalent 978059, compression ratio 2.967619

Anyone have some ideas or clues as to where I can start to solve this problem?

TIA!
Andy

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