X-related questions

[Rick Stevens]

On Fri, 2005-11-11 at 13:12 -0700, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
>     After over a decade of running text-only servers, and thanks to 
> William Hooper yesterday with his help on getting one of my systems 
> upgraded, I now have a dedicated X-server machine.  Gnome's running nice 
> and cozy.  I have to say, I'm impressed, very impressed.  I even went as 
> far as having VNC display my desktop on my Windows workstation so I can 
> always get to that server.
> 
>     But now I have some questions:
> 
>     In order for VNC to connect and work, I have to be logged in on the 
> server console.  Once I log out, it also kills the VNC connection and I 
> can't get on anymore.  So, is there some way to setup VNC so that I 
> don't have to be logged onto the server?  In other words, leave the 
> server console logged out (sitting at the login screen) and be able to 
> remotely connect through VNC, log in and work remotely?

If you load the "vnc" module in the X configuration, then you share
the main display.  Whatever shows up on the primary screen on the Linux
box shows up in your VNC viewer window.  Add the line:

	Load	"vnc"

to the 'Section "Module"' part of /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, and restart
X.

>     Second, since I refuse to log in as root, specially when I'm doing 
> it remotely, this raises some issues.  For example, when I need to edit 
> system files, say /etc/hosts, I can't do it.  When I launch gedit and 
> open that file, it tells me the file is read-only because I'm not the 
> owner.  The correct action of course, however there's no way for me to 
> allow gedit to edit that file by means of additional credentials.  Even 
> if I authenticate as root (by launching some system related 
> configuration) it still won't let me edit system files (while logged in 
> as a regular user.)  So again, how can I get past this?  I don't want to 
> have to open a terminal window and using sudo or su to get to root just 
> to edit the file ... in a text window.  Otherwise why have X installed, eh?

Well, I tunnel VNC through ssh, so stuff is encrypted.  You log in as
the normal user, then "sudo vi /etc/hosts" or whatever to get done what
you want.

To use VNC ssh tunneling, create your ssh password file, then add:

	Option      "passwordfile" "/path/to/ssh/passwd/file"

to the "Section 'Screen'" part of /etc/X11/xorg.conf and restart X.
You'll need a VNC viewer that understands tunneling.  Under Linux,
"vncviewer -via gateway hostname" works, where "gateway" is the host
name of the machine running sshd.  sshd and the display is on the same
machine in my case, so "vncviewer -via prophead prophead" gets me to
my display.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-          Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.           -
----------------------------------------------------------------------