VNC is not working

[oldcpu]

Hi
You need to run vnc on the remote for that one, have a read of this one;
NoMachine NX - Support: Article

Thanks for your efforts to help. Before my 1st post on this subject, I've been thru that page over a dozen times, trying to understand it.

The difference between "sharing" and "shadowing" is not clear to me, but best I can determine "sharing" is what I want and NOT "shadowing". To that aim, as I noted in my above post, I applied:

EnableDesktopSharing=1
and
EnableDesktopSharingAuthorization=0

and it did not help. My mother was NOT able to see what I was doing on her desktop, which indicates I did NOT join her already running desktop session but rather when I connect to her PC with "nx" I am still starting a separate desktop session (that is not observed by her).

IMHO despite the efforts on nx staff to make this clear, it is anything but clear.

[plodder]

Well for those of you that are still interested in solving the original problem of making VNC work (rather than resorting to NX - good though that is), I think I may have found a solution. Thanks to Kimmeridgien for indicating the direction in which to go.

It does seem that the current version of TightVNC has a problem with IPv6 and this has been mentioned in some blogs at the TightVNC site. When you attempt to VNC to a Suse 11.2 host, xinetd invokes the command as specified in the Yast / Network Services (xinetd) / vnc1 entry, which is:

/usr/bin/Xvnc -noreset -inetd -query localhost -geometry 1024x768 -depth 16

The relevant part here is '-query localhost', which I gather means 'supply an XDMCP logon screen from localhost (127.0.0.1)', the VNC server in this case. However, the server can only determine the IP equivalent of the name 'localhost' by looking in the /etc/hosts file. Unfortunately there are two possibilities, one for IPv4:

127.0.0.1 localhost

and one for IPv6:

::1 localhost ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

and TightVNC doesn't seem to know which one to go for. The solution is to include a unique alias on the IPv4 line and then specify that the xinetd command should use that alias instead of 'localhost'. Thus the /etc/hosts IPv4 line is edited to become:

127.0.0.1 localhost ipv4-localhost

and the arguments for the vnc1 xineted entry are changed, via the edit facility in Yast, to become:

-noreset -inetd -query ipv4-localhost -geometry 1024x768 -depth 16

After completing these two changes, you appear to be able to use VNC to the Suse 11.2 server without rebooting it. Note that you do not have to disable IPv6 in Yast / Network Devices / Network Settings for this to work.

Hope that helps.

[swerdna]

Wow well done many thanks

[oldcpu]

Wow well done many thanks

Indeed. Brilliant! Thanks plodder for posting this fix.

[xlinux4lifex]

Thanks for the fix plodder!

However, I wish there was an online update to automatically fix this (after all it was an OpenSuse 11.2 update that broke this in the first place) so I don't have to manually apply this fix to multiple machines.

-Mike

[xlinux4lifex]

plodder,

I have one more question, should I edit the etc/hosts file by commenting out the original localhost line like this?

#127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost ipv4-localhost

OR just add the ipv4 alias?

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost ipv4-localhost

It works both ways and I wasn't sure which is correct.

Thanks.

-Mike

[baaldemon]

Thanks, just took out the localhost alias from the hosts file for the ipv6 address and its working now.

[mobile_dan]

Can I see your xstartup please. I think it would help me. thanks
11.2 worked out the box but for me only shows twm. Would like to know how to make it show KDM

[DiskCrasher]

Thanks for the hosts file tip. Now I can get a connection and a login screen, but it immediately disconnects me after logging in ("connection closed").

[Chris-RSR]

edit the ipv6 line in /etc/hosts

::1 localhost ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

to

#::1 localhost ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

and it works