VNC usage

English Network/Internet
#1

Ill start with what my end result should be, then what ive got now.

Im trying to run an application on my iPod touch to remotely control the SAME SESSION that the local user is on, on my suse box.
VNC seems the best route, as there is already a nicely worked VNC client application for my iPod, and it works great to my windows box.

The problem ive been having with suse is that when i vnc onto it, it starts a different session/desktop, and i cannot see/control what the local user is.

I’ve messed with VNC and my suse for about 3 weeks, and am fed up looking for answers! (though i learned a ton from this forum on the way!:wink: )

Keep in mind with replies, its not a firewall issue, i can get access to the suse box via VNC, just not the right session.

likely not enough info, but look at time stamp please hah

#2

Hi lethlorian welcome to the Forums.

You have to use x11vnc for same-session VNC. It’s in the default repositories but not installed by default. You can read about how to use it here:
x11vnc: a VNC server for real X displays

And if you do a forum search for posts by oldcpu with keyword VNC you’ll come across how he uses it with results that work for him.

Luck

#3

I use “x11vnc” with “tightvnc” a lot for Linux PC to Linux PC (not so sure about an ipod … can you run X window applications on an iPod ? ) . I do this mainly to support my 82-year old mother on openSUSE, where she lives a continent away. The more she becomes familiar with the PC, the more she wants to do, and the more questions she has. Hence I typically connect to her openSUSE-10.2 (KDE-3.5.5), take over her desktop, and while chatting with her on the phone, demonstrate as to how to do things. Given she has only been using computers since the age of 75, I am truly impressed with her willingness to learn and try new things.

I have both tightvnc and x11vnc installed on all of our PCs. PC’s have port 22 and 5900 open.

Anyway, I typically access her 10.2 PC from my 10.3 PC running x11vnc by the following (piping the vnc display over ssh which is reasonably secure):

PC-1 is an openSUSE-10.3 PC
PC-2 is an opensuse-10.2 PC

All the typing below is done on PC-1.

From 1st konsole on PC-1:
ssh -t -L 5900:localhost:5900 mymother@ip-address-of-pc-2 ‘x11vnc -localhost -nolookup -nopw -display :0’
… and then enter password for user “mymother” on PC-2:

From 2nd konsole on PC-1
vncviewer -encodings “tight copyrect hextile” localhost:0

And I successfully connected to PC-2, piping its vnc desktop display back to pc-1. Note the syntax is VERY important. You need to put a space in exactly the same place. Be careful wrt upper/lower case … etc …

I also do a few extra things (not explained above) for security.

I have tested the above with KDE-3 on openSUSE-10.2, 10.3, 11.0 and 11.1 and it works ok. There is currently (as of today) a problem with KDE-4.1.3 on openSUSE-11.1 that I have not sorted yet.

Yaloki (user pbleser on our forum) taught me how to do this, one night on IRC chat, a couple of years ago. He also has a note wrt on this blog: yaloki - VNC+SSH on an existing display

#4

Somewhat thread hi-jack
As tightVNC doesn’t even come up in the kde4 menu and I’ve to start it with via /usr/bin/vncviewer … not to mention it doesn’t allow for much customization via the UI (or should I say, what UI), aren’t there better alternatives? I ended up on a wild goose chase last time I looked… and the one that was in 11.0 (Can’t remember its name) screwed up the image, showing lines double and all kinds of strange color blocks.

Somewhat back on topic:
Think I’ll end up using UltraVNC for the viewer on wine as the testresults seem positive.
It supports a whole range of useful things like direct filetransfers and shared clipboard (though I don’t know to which degree these are supported under wine)

#5

I’ve finally gotten everything the way i would like it with this

x11vnc -forever

Using Jaadu VNC viewer for iphone/ipod touch, i am able to flawlessly manipulate the same session on my openSUSE!

I found that using other viewer apps on the iphone to not work as well, because they do not handle the buffering nearly as well, and caused memory dumps on the iphone.
I was able to use mocha VNC (an iphone app) while using “x11vnc -scale 1/2” but text became unreadable.

In general i am very pleased with the ease of x11vnc and understand why you guys swear by it!

Word to the wise for iphone users… Jaadu all the way!!