Please explain output of: systemctl status xvnc.socket

English Network/Internet
1

Hello,

since several updates of Tumbleweed I can no longer log onto remote machines via TigerVNC.
The client always outputs “The connection was dropped by the server before the session could be established.” So I checked the server status and found a strange output as described below:

When I run this command, there is always a line starting with “Until: …”. What is this telling me ? From the timestamp I suspect a kind of timeout so that remote logging in is blocked:

notebook3:/etc # systemctl status xvnc.socket
● xvnc.socket - Xvnc Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/xvnc.socket; enabled; preset: disabled)
Active: active (listening) since Thu 2023-02-16 16:50:37 CET; 16min ago
Until: Thu 2023-02-16 16:50:37 CET; 16min ago
Listen: [::]:5901 (Stream)
Accepted: 19; Connected: 0;
Tasks: 0 (limit: 4915)
CPU: 4ms
CGroup: /system.slice/xvnc.socket

Feb 16 16:50:37 notebook3 systemd[1]: Closed Xvnc Server.
Feb 16 16:50:37 notebook3 systemd[1]: Stopping Xvnc Server…
Feb 16 16:50:37 notebook3 systemd[1]: Listening on Xvnc Server.

2

@MarioBlunk Hi I suspect it might be related to the pam changes (xrdp breaking), see TW 20230131 - breaks xrdp because of pam changes - openSUSE Factory - openSUSE Mailing Lists

3

Is there a workaround until the bug is fixed ?

4

@MarioBlunk Did you copy the file back to /etc/pam.d as indicated in the initial ML thread?

5

Which file should I copy ?

ls /etc/pam.d/ outputs:

common-account     common-auth     common-password     common-session     smtp
common-account-pc  common-auth-pc  common-password-pc  common-session-pc

ls /usr/lib/pam.d/ outputs:

chage            cups               newusers   sshd          usermod
chfn             gnomesu-pam        other      su            vlock
chpasswd         groupadd           passwd     sudo          vnc
chsh             groupdel           polkit-1   sudo-i        xdm
common-account   groupmod           remote     su-l          xdm-np
common-auth      lightdm            runuser    systemd-user  xfce4-screensaver
common-password  lightdm-autologin  runuser-l  tigervnc
common-session   lightdm-greeter    samba      useradd
crond            login              screen     userdel
6

I copied the file tigervnc to /etc/pam.d, restarted xvnc.socket. But no luck. The file tigervnc does indeed exist in that directory in an an older snapshot of tumbleweed (where xvnc works fine).

I’m still wondering what is meant by “Until: Sat 2023-02-18 08:46:18 CET; 2min 32s ago” (see my first post above).

7

This is a bug in the current systemd. This field is valid only for the service or scope units and corresponds to RuntimeMaxSec directive, but apparently systemctl prints it for all other unit types.

The value is time when service was started plus the value of RuntimeMaxSec. For supported types systemd correctly initializes it to default infinity, but for everything else it stays at zero which is not the default and so is printed.

8

Thanks for clarifying. So is the problem a result of the systemctl bug or a result of the pam changes ?

9

So the systemd-issue has been solved. But tigervnc itself still doesn’t work.
I copied the file tigervnc to /etc/pam.d but no luck.
What am I doing wrong ?

10

The client machine output is:

user@work1:~> vncviewer 192.168.4.4:5901

TigerVNC Viewer 64-bit v1.12.0
Copyright (C) 1999-2021 TigerVNC Team and many others (see README.rst)
See https://www.tigervnc.org for information on TigerVNC.

Mon Apr 24 16:07:23 2023
DecodeManager: Detected 4 CPU core(s)
DecodeManager: Creating 4 decoder thread(s)
CConn: Connected to host 192.168.4.4 port 5901
CConnection: Server supports RFB protocol version 3.8
CConnection: Using RFB protocol version 3.8
CConnection: Choosing security type VeNCrypt(19)
CVeNCrypt: Choosing security type X509None (260)

Mon Apr 24 16:07:25 2023
CConn: End of stream
CConn: The connection was dropped by the server before the session could be established.

11

The problem is related to the “auto-login” feature. On system startup a dedicated user is auto-logged on the server machine. This seems to be blocking tigervnc. If that user logs off, then tigervnc works fine. So I disabled the “auto-login” and everything behaves as it should.

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