[NBLUG/talk] Problems with X and VNC

[Bob Blick]

Andrew said:
> I'm having some problems setting up vncserver. Well, actually,
> setting up X to work with vncserver. The machine which will be
> running the server is a Debian Woody box with XFree86 3.3.6 and
> WindowMaker + Gnome. When I run "startx" from the command line, X
> starts up just fine, so my X setup seems to be OK. I've been
> running it this way for a year. A few days ago I installed the
> vncserver package and, after wrangling with a font problem for a
> short while, got the server running. The problem shows up when I
> connect to the server with vncviewer. All I get is plain X and
> nothing more. Just the standard grey background and the ugly "X"
> cursor. Nothing else... not even an Xterm. So with no pretty
> icons to click on and no terminal to type into, I'm dead in the
> water. Nothing else can happen in that window.

Debian. hehe. Do you have a ~/.vnc/xstartup file? What does it say?
Because if it doesn't specify a window manager, you won't get one, and it
sounds like you have the plain "tweed background with X" that you get
before a window manager takes over.

Here's mine:

#!/bin/sh
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey

case "$VNCDESKTOP" in
kde)
        startkde &
        ;;
windowmaker)
        windowmaker &
        ;;
*)
        xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
        twm &
        ;;
esac

Cheerful regards,

Bob