Hi,
I've been playing around with VNC (TightVNC, specifically) for a day now, and I like it. It'll come in handy when I need to use my own Linux box when I'm stuck in a Windows cluster.
However, it's slightly annoying that I need to do this in order to activate it:
Code:
(have X stop running)
$ vncserver :0
(have a headless machine running)
Really, I don't want a headless machine that I can VNC into when I want to see what's on the screen. I need a Remotely Shared Desktop, which allows me to broadcast my desktop to a VNC client, while actually still being shown via the X server.
I looked at the KDE Desktop Sharing / Remote Desktop software and walkthrough
here, and urpmi'd krfb (the rpm link on that page is dead; urpmi is the apt-get of Mandrake) - but it seems that the krfb version I got has moved on a bit, and it doesn't seem to work as described.
That page shows that you can definitely broadcast an X desktop that you're currently using, because the screenshot shows that the screen with VNCViewer on it is the one being broadcast.
However, even using VNCServer, VNCConnect and VNCViewer on my localhost (that is, not trying the KDE Remote Desktop idea), I get turned away when VNCViewer tries to connect:
Code:
# vncviewer 127.0.0.1:0
vncviewer: VNC server closed connection
# vncserver :0
A VNC server is already running as :0
I take it the VNC Server apparently running as display :0 is my X desktop (and not a display with VNC running on it afterall)
Netstat shows that nothing is listening on 5900, 5901, 5800 or 5801, so VNC is definitely not listening on :0 (or at all).
Any thoughts?
Edit: I forgot to mention, that I have been successful in having vncserver run as display :0, and then fire up X on another display, then use a VNCViewer to VNC into the :0 display as if I was VNC'ing remotely from another machine. But running two X sessions like that is - undesirable. Such a performance hit.
