Hi,

I have seen and tried a lot of web information about issues with VNC and the RHEL 5.x implementation of VNC. I can't seem to get the behavior I want. Let me explain.

With SLES 10, I can use YaST and with a few clicks end up with a system that when rebooted, accepts VNC viewer connections to :1 and displays the system login screen. Here I can log in as root or any user. Once logged in, I can choose to use the command line to restart the system if necessary and eventually, I can reconnect with the vncviewer to the system login screen.

RHEL 5.2 has a "share your desktop" setting in preferences which works fine, but requires that I be logged in locally, which prevents remote restarts. There is also a system services dialog that refuses to start vncserver as a service. There are numerous tutorial in the RH knowledge base and the web that explain how to specifically setup individual displays, :1, :2 for specific users and claim that it can work after boot. I have not been able to get these working, but what I really want is a simpler, single display, :1, that will present the RHEL login screen so I can log in as any user I want. I am the only person accessing these servers and they are behind a firewall using secure protocols when remote.

I think Red Hat did not want to make this too easy as VNC users need to consider the security risks. Is there a way to get the SLES 10 VNC approach to work on RHEL 5?

thanks very much for ideas,

Hello,

Have a look at this Linux VNC Server Setup. Halfway the post where it says Launching vncserver As a Service is listed what you need to change in /etc/sysconfig/vncservers in order to start vncserver as a service. Presumably it works on current Redhat/Fedora/Centos, I can only confirm I have it running on RHEL5.2.

Kind regards,

Eric

Eric,

thanks, that was helpful.

It still seems to be a user-specific invocation of VNC. Is that your experience? Do you get to the RH login screen or a particular user's session?

The SLES 10 that gets me to the login screen comes with:

tightvnc-1.2.9-201.17
xorg-x11-Xvnc-6.9.0-50.54.11

an xinetd coniguration with:

Service: vnc1
User: nobody
Server: /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvnc
Args: :42 -inetd -once -query localhost -geometry 1024x768 -depth 16

Would it be feasable to install this on RHEL 5.2 or has SLES mixed it up into the OS in a non-transferable way?

Is the freeNX solution an alternative or does it have drawbacks?

thanks to all for any ideas,
tongar

Hello,

In the environment we use at work, the users connect to their own session so yes it's user specific. How to do it for a 'general' environment is a bit unclear to me at this moment, so I'll have to look into that when at work.

I'll let you know what comes out of it but it woun't be before mid next week.

Kind regards,

Eric

Eric,

You are very kind, but please don't research this on my account. I have decided to use an NX solution and will not be pursuing this. NX will not allow a root login as VNC does, but that is not necessary in my case.

thanks,
tongar

Ok, no worries.

Kind regards,

Eric