VNC and native X display with vnc.so [Was: Re: more Fedora Cookbook: VNC]

[Robert P. J. Day]

ok, dumb question time, but you knew that, right?  :-)

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Les Mikesell wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >
> > hmmmm ... i never tried that particular scenario, but i'm aware
> > now that the newer and better way to grab the native X display is
> > to use the vnc.so module.  having said that, i've been unable to
> > get that to work, despite a couple readable online pages.
> >
> > so, if anyone has an actual (heh heh) recipe for taking control of
> > a remote desktop using vnc.so, feel free to drop me a note -- i'll
> > test it, then wiki it for others.
>
> I used it some versions back but I think the reason I quit was that
> it quit working at some point in the switch to Xorg.  The current
> version seems to be named libvnc.so but I'm not sure if it is fixed
> and I don't have anything later than FC6 to test.

yes, it's libvnc.so, here (on my F8 x86_64 system):

# rpm -qf /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libvnc.so
vnc-server-4.1.2-23.fc8

so that looks good on the server side.

> It should just be a matter of adding the Load statement in your
> Xorg.conf and having a password file. This advice looks promising:
> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=162314

actually, i was following along here:

  http://www.realvnc.com/products/free/4.1/x0.html

and, in the spirit of trying to do as little as possible to get
something working initially, i made the following changes to
/etc/X11/xorg.conf on the server side (obviously disabling any
authentication as a first attempt):

=====
...
Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
        Option "SecurityTypes" "None"   <-- added this
EndSection

Section "Module"                        <-- and this entire section
        Load "vnc"
EndSection
=====

  on the server side i then restarted X (init 3; init 5) and, from the
client side:

  $ vncviewer 192.168.1.4:0

and, lo, i get a VNC window, but it looks like crap -- jagged
graphics, underneath which you can vaguely see that, yes, it is trying
to represent the remote desktop, and the remote control does work but,
clearly, i have some work to do here.  perhaps messing with the
geometry or something.  but, basically, the vnc.so functionality seems
good -- i just need to diagnose why the display looks like crap.

i'm open to suggestions.

rday
--


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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

Home page:                                         http://crashcourse.ca
Fedora Cookbook:    http://crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Fedora_Cookbook
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