{"id":931,"date":"2007-11-01T20:53:13","date_gmt":"2007-11-01T20:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/11\/connecting-to-a-linux-server-using-vnc.htm"},"modified":"2007-11-01T20:56:01","modified_gmt":"2007-11-01T20:56:01","slug":"connecting-to-a-linux-server-using-vnc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/11\/connecting-to-a-linux-server-using-vnc.htm","title":{"rendered":"Connecting to a Linux server using VNC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of my computers are not in my office\/den but are providing server functions for which the need to access them directly is rare. When I do need access to the Windows machines, I can connect to them using a variety of RDP clients; for my Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 box it’s a similar situation but this time using SSH (for command line access) or VNC (for a GUI).<\/p>\n

Although RHEL includes a VNC server and I’d opened up TCP port 5900 in the firewall configuration (using system-config-securitylevel<\/code>), for some reason I was still having problems creating a VNC connection and it turns out that there were two main reasons for this.<\/p>\n

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  1. Each VNC display will use a new port number, so display 0 is on 5900, display 1 on 5901, etc. I was trying to connect on port 5900 but it’s not as simple as opening the port – I needed to start a session with vncserver<\/code> (supplying a password if required – the vncpasswd<\/code> command can also be used for this), then note the port number (open the appropriate firewall ports) and connect from my chosen VNC client.<\/li>\n
  2. For connection to an existing logged on console session on the server running a graphical environment (display 0), it’s necessary to enable this in the Remote Desktop preferences:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"RemoteOnce I’d got around this, it was fairly straightforward to connect to display 1 on port 5901 but the default display was using the rather dated Tab Window Manager<\/a>(TWM) GUI (although starting GNOME<\/a> applications like gedit<\/code> applied the GNOME look and feel to that application’s window. By editing the \/root\/.vnc\/xstartup file<\/a> I could comment out the twm &<\/code> line and replace it with startx &<\/code>; however, because there was already an instance of X running on the server (for display 0), I found that the startx &<\/code> command failed and I needed to use gnome-session &<\/code> in its place<\/a>. I also commented out the line starting with xterm<\/code> and included gnome-terminal &<\/code> at the end of the script so my xstartup file now reads:<\/p>\n

    #!\/bin\/sh<\/code><\/p>\n

    # Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
    \n# unset SESSION_MANAGER
    \n# exec \/etc\/X11\/xinit\/xinitrc<\/code><\/p>\n

    [ -x \/etc\/vnc\/xstartup ] && exec \/etc\/vnc\/xstartup
    \n[ -r $HOME\/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME\/.Xresources
    \nxsetroot -solid grey
    \nvncconfig -iconic &
    \n# xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title \"$VNCDESKTOP Desktop\" &
    \n# twm &
    \ngnome-session &
    \ngnome-terminal &<\/code><\/p>\n

    Just for completeness, here are a few more notes that might be useful:<\/p>\n