Jason,
Here is what I ended up doing after talking to Radoslav and Jecel on IRC. I setup tighvncserver and the minimal X setup to support it. Here's what I did to get a working Squeak that I could connect and disconnect from.
1. Login to box2 with ssh.
2. Run the server once to get the basic local configuration started:
a. tightvncserver (it will ask you for a password to use and setup ~/.vnc/)
b. (Note the display number it states when it starts, I think this will vary depending on the user and how many other servers are running, but I'm not sure.)
tightvncserver -kill :1 (substitute the appropriate display number for the 1 here)
3. Now edit ~/.vnc/xstartup and add something like
squeakvm ~/Squeak3.8-6665.image &
as the last line.
4. Start the server again
tightvncserver
At this point you should be able to connect from your workstation with
xtightvnc box2.squeakfoundation.org:1 (again substitute the appropriate display number)
It should then ask for your password and then you should be connected. There is no WM so this is no frills but you can ask Squeak to fullscreen itself and then other than the display delays it looks just like a local Squeak. You can close the window and the Squeak process keeps running and you can reconnect at will.
This seems to do the job in my opinion.
Ken
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 09:56 -0400, Jason Rogers wrote:
On 09/12/2005 06:53 PM, Ken Causey apparently said:
<jrogers> Ken - I was wondering what the feasibility is of getting a VNC server set up on box2
My first reponse to this is why you don't use http://map1.squeakfoundation.org/sm/package/d4f692a8-c7fa-4d49-927f-74aba7e8... (RemoteFrameBuffer). My understanding is that this was what was done in the past for the website image and similar setups. To my knowledge setting up a VNC server otherwise doesn't make any sense for box2 because box2 has not windowing system of any kind. There is no view to relay over the network.
We tried that with the current website image. The problem is that when we have problems with the image hanging or some such nonsense we need to get into the image and see what is going wrong, only at these times the RFB server doesn't respond either. So, I end up having to kill the process and relaunch the image. This has made for many headaches. I don't seem to be able to reproduce the issues outside of the production environment, so when the image hangs I really need to "get in" and see what's going on.
I understand your reluctance to install an X system and window manager, but it seems to be the only feasible answer. So, with that in mind would you be willing to install a minimalistic window manager and X system (WM, FluxBox, OpenBox, etc. are all pretty lightweight and should suit our purposes). Thanks.
On 09/13/2005 12:59 PM, Ken Causey apparently said:
Jason,
Here is what I ended up doing after talking to Radoslav and Jecel on IRC. I setup tighvncserver and the minimal X setup to support it. Here's what I did to get a working Squeak that I could connect and disconnect from.
Login to box2 with ssh.
Run the server once to get the basic local configuration started:
a. tightvncserver (it will ask you for a password to use and setup ~/.vnc/)
b. (Note the display number it states when it starts, I think this will vary depending on the user and how many other servers are running, but I'm not sure.)
tightvncserver -kill :1 (substitute the appropriate display number for the 1 here)
Now edit ~/.vnc/xstartup and add something like
squeakvm ~/Squeak3.8-6665.image &
as the last line.
Start the server again
tightvncserver
At this point you should be able to connect from your workstation with
xtightvnc box2.squeakfoundation.org:1 (again substitute the appropriate display number)
It should then ask for your password and then you should be connected. There is no WM so this is no frills but you can ask Squeak to fullscreen itself and then other than the display delays it looks just like a local Squeak. You can close the window and the Squeak process keeps running and you can reconnect at will.
This seems to do the job in my opinion.
Ken,
Thanks. I just read your two emails. I have been in a meeting for most of the day.
I appreciate your diligence, even though I didn't get to hop onto IRC. I will check out the configuration.
Again, thanks a lot for your help.
On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 14:42 -0400, Jason Rogers wrote:
Ken,
Thanks. I just read your two emails. I have been in a meeting for most of the day.
I appreciate your diligence, even though I didn't get to hop onto IRC. I will check out the configuration.
Again, thanks a lot for your help.
You are quite welcome, it turned out to be easier than I expected.
I already mentioned this to you on IRC but I want to go ahead and say it here for the benefit of anyone else reading this who would like to make use of tightvnc on box2 for their service(s):
Although the resource cost of tightvnc is fairly low I would like to suggest that no one plan to use it on a permanent basis. It's great for debugging problems that only appear on the server or in emergencies but it effectively represent another Squeak process that could be providing another service to the Squeak community. That's not counting the bandwidth usage.
Admittedly we have plenty of resources now and I mention this more for the long term than as a problem in the near future. More and more services are appearing and some of them are moving to box2 and I expect many more will in the future.
Ken
box-admins@lists.squeakfoundation.org