[Box-Admins] TightVNC on box4

[Ken Causey]

On 02/23/2014 11:28 AM, Ken Causey wrote:
> On 02/23/2014 10:12 AM, Chris Cunnington wrote:
>> I could not figure how Chris Muller was constantly logged in all the
>> time. Every time I logged in I typed who to see if anybody's around.
>> The :1 told me that VNC was likely involved, but I didn't realized it
>> was its own process. I was talking to Ken about using Ian's RFB.
>> I recall a conversation about six-eight months about where Levente
>> recommended TightVNC (IIRC). I figure I'll switch to that and we can
>> make it the
>> standard for box4. I assume that this single process can have another
>> port such as 5902/:2 added to it?
>>
>> Chris
>>
>
> Yes, with external VNC there is an external process that acts as an X
> client that interfaces to the VNC protocol.
>
> Chris is logged in because, well it is in some sense a full X desktop so
> you can have multiple programs running, and he has a terminal open on
> the VNC he started for his source.squeak.org mirror and he is logged in
> in it.
>
> Using external VNC is only slightly more complicated that RFB.

s/that/than/

>
> 1. Login and stay in your home directory then
>
> mkdir .vnc
>
> 2. Using your favorite text editor add a xstartup file to that
> directory, this is a script that is started after the X client is open
> to start X server programs.  Feel free to copy mine at
>
> /home/ken/.vnc/xstartup

This should of course be

/home/kencausey/.vnc/xstartup

>
> as a starting point.
>
> 3. Run
>
> vncpasswd
>
> to set your password
>
> 4. Run
>
> vncserver
>
> This will report back to you your port number which you would then
> specify on your local VNC client.  If :1 is in use but not :2 then you
> will get :2, and so on.
>
> Not that in ~/.vnc there are a couple of files created that can be of
> some value.  There is a .pid file that stores the process ID of the
> xtightvncserver process.  More usefully there is a .log file that logs
> any stdout/stderr from the processes.  For example if squeak fails to
> start or crashes you can find useful info there.
>
> Finally, when you are done, run
>
> vncserver -kill :<port number>
>
> To stop the VNC server and all the programs that were started under it.
>   <port number> is of course the number reported when you ran vncserver
> before and what you used to connect beyond of course the hostname.
>
> Hopefully this makes it reasonably clear.
>
> Ken
>

P.S. And just to be sure your realize it, once you have done this once, 
unless of course you want to modify your xstartup or set a new password, 
you can just start at step 4 in the future.