Comments on: Set up the VNC Server in Fedora

By: GNot

GNot — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:26:14 +0000

@BKing1138: Thanks for your feedback.
Right, I didn’t notice that mistake… In that case the vnc instance most probably does not start correctly. The logfile inside the ~/.vnc/ directory should be checked and of course the “geometry” statement should be written properly.

By: BKing1138

BKing1138 — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:30:46 +0000

P.K.,

Was the “-geomatry 800×600″ a typo? If not, then should that not be “-geometry 800×600″?

If your /etc/sysconfig/vncservers files is actually correct, then I would agree it is likely that your firewall is not allowing the connection.

By: GNot

GNot — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:09:41 +0000

Smells like a network misconfiguration or a firewall that prohibits connection to the vnc service.

By: P. K.

P. K. — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:07:23 +0000

I can configure my server (on FC-5 Linux) and it starts fine but when I attempt to connect to it
from a client on windows machine, I get this error:
{ when I debug it using TCPDUMP }

server-name > client-name unreachable – admin prohibited, length 56

On the server I have:

VNCSERVERARGS=”2:username” (actual user name here)
VNCSERVERARGS[2]=”-geomatry 800×600″

Can someone tell what is going on my server which is maing it refuse connection?
I can start local VNC viewer on the sever machine, but remote connection is prohibited.

Thanks in advance.

By: GNot

GNot — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:56:09 +0000

Answers: 1. I am sure I had seen such information at the Fedora Forums. You can securely connect to the VNC server (either remote desktop or graphical greeter) through an SSH tunnel, as described in this article. 2. You can use the gdmsetup utility to configure these setting from a graphical interface.

By: penguin

penguin — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 03:51:01 +0000

Two questions:

1. Can you point me to or provide some good information on securely connecting to the vnc-server at the “graphical greeter” login screen. (I’m using Fedora)

2. Can you disable others from viewing the remote screen while you are connected to it from a remote location. I mean people that would actually be in front of the server while you are connected to it.

By: GNot

GNot — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:13:27 +0000

Hello Răzvan,
I have never used TightVNC before, but I assume that you can connect to the VNC server, that runs on the remote Fedora machine, with any VNC client (either from Windows or any other operating system), provided that you use the correct info (as I have described in the tutorial above). For example:

vncviewer 192.168.0.1:5901:1

You wrote:

you can connect from the Windows machine (even if no local user is logged in on the Fedora box), type in the password for a local account and work in it as if you were in front of remote machine’s console

You want to connect to the remote fedora machine with a vnc client and you want the login-screen to be displayed, so to enter a remote user’s username/password in order to connect to the remote desktop? If this is what you want, you will need to configure the VNC server in a different way, so that the GDM display manager is shown whenever you connect to the VNC service. This method is a completely different approach and I don’t think that it could fit in the above tutorial. Please have a look at this tutorial I found on the fedora forums. Hope it helps you out.

Thanks for your feedback.
Best Regards :)

By: Răzvan Sandu

Răzvan Sandu — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:25:51 +0000

Hello all,

And thanks a lot, GNot, for your great work !

Now, just a single question: how does one see the remote Fedora machine using TightVNC (or other client) from a *Windows* machine ? A typical Windows user will expect that program performs in PCAnywhere’s style: you can connect from the Windows machine (even if no local user is logged in on the Fedora box), type in the password for a local account and work in it as if you were in front of remote machine’s console…

Can you please add this in your tutorial?

Many thanks !
Răzvan

By: GNot

GNot — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 13:04:57 +0000

Hello Vinod, This error message appears because you have probably deleted the VNC instance's PID file (/home/vinod/.vnc/vinod.aptechutc.com:5.pid) by hand while the VNC service was running, so, when you try to shut down the service, it does not know which process to kill (missing PID file), so it outputs the error. Run the following:

ps ax | grep vnc | grep -v grep

It will show the vnc process ID (PID) numbers. Issue a kill for each process, eg:

kill 2433

Repeat the above step for every Xvnc or vncconfig process. Check if there are any *.pid files inside the /home/vinod/.vnc/ directory. If there are, delete them. Next, follow the above instructions and configure only one user to test it, assign a vnc password to that user as described above and finally start the vnc service with service vncserver start Finally, running graphical applications either locally or remotely via VNC as root is not recommended. Please try to use unprivileged users for this task for the sake of security. Hope these help.

By: Vinod

Vinod — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 10:08:34 +0000

Hi,
Good article. Well explained. Thanks.

Now, I have a problem here. I could configure my vncserver to use only with root user and password. Can I get a solution to make work with other users?(Multiple users simultaneously). I am able to connect from WindowsXP using VNCviewer.

If I add any normal user in /etc/sysconfig/vncservers, at the time of restarting the vncserver service , I am getting a error message “vncserver is failed to restart”. Can you give a solution for this. Where do I need to configure my other users.

Message appear, while restarting vncserver
————————-Message——————–
Shutting down VNC server: 5:vinod
Can’t find file /home/vinod/.vnc/vinod.aptechutc.com:5.pid
You’ll have to kill the Xvnc process manually

[FAILED]
Starting VNC server: 5:vinod [FAILED]

————————————————–
vinod is a norrmal user.

Thanks

Vinod Chandran