Remote Desktop on Xubuntu 9.10
So I was planning to work from home on the Friday after thanksgiving so I wanted to be able to access my work desktop from home just in case. Normally I just ssh and use terminals and such, but for some reason I decided I wanted a full desktop. I use Xubuntu at home and at the office, and there is no default VNC setup like there is with Ubuntu and Kubuntu. A couple of quick Google searches and I came across this post:
vincentkong.com » Blog Archive » Remote Desktop on Xubuntu.
It pointed me in exactly the right direction. Just a few package differences for Xubuntu 9.10.
Here are the steps I used:
Install VNC Server and tools
$ sudo apt-get install x11vnc vnc4-common
Once the tools are installed, setup a password for the VNC server:
$ sudo vncpasswd /root/.vncpasswd
Install and configure xinetd
$ sudo apt-get install xinetd
Now, enable the vnc service via a new xinetd.conf using whatever text editor you like, I prefer vim.
$ sudo vim /etc/xinetd.d/x11vnc
service x11vnc
{
port = 5900
type = UNLISTED
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/bin/x11vnc
server_args = -inetd -o /var/log/x11vnc.log -display :0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -many -bg -rfbauth /root/.vncpasswd
disable = no
}
Finally, restart xinetd.conf:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart
You should now be able to connect with a VNC Viewer. Under Xubuntu I prefer the vinagre package.
$ sudo apt-get install vinagre
Thats it. Thanks much to Vincent for his initial post. This helped me tremendously.
Hey Marc -
What version of x11vnc is this for? It appears that the version supplied with xubuntu 9.1 is 0.9.3. With that version, I could not get the -auth option to work. It would let me connect, but as soon as I entered credentials it would disconnect VNC and the gdm logon dialog would reappear on display 0. It seems as though gdm the auth file is randomly generated folder in 9.1.
I downloaded and built x11vnc 0.9.8 and used the “-auth guess” option, which seems to work reliably. I’ve only restarted, connected, and logged on three times so I may be wrong ;-). I also used the “cursor -arrow” switch to change it from the X to an arrow.
I’m pretty much using stock everything. The version listed of x11vnc that I have installed is 0.9.3.dfsg.1-1ubuntu2, the same.
The option that I am using is -rfbauth not -auth. I haven’t tried it with -auth at all.
Congratulation for your how-to. I was just looking for a straightforward way to connect to my xubuntu 10.04 machine without monitor nor keyboard and it works fine.
Only a fix: on my installation, it’s not vn4-common but vn4server
Greetings from Spain
Glad you found it useful.
I’m in the process of upgrading to 10.04 on most of my installations. Three down, three to go. I’ll post a new guide with the updated packages and steps after I’m done within the next few days.