I have been using various versions and flavors of VNC for almost 20 years. I will admit that I do not understand the thing. But I poke around, copy a working .xstartup file from another computer and eventually get things working. Here is my latest adventure...

I installed tightvnc on a Raspberry Pi 3 running Ubuntu Mate 16.04. It is working and I can connect to it with vinagre on my CentOS 7 workstation. EXCEPT... I cannot move text to/from the Pi with the clipboard.

I have several CentOS 7 headless machines running tigervnc. I noticed that on the tigervnc remote display there is a minimized program "vncconfig" present when I connect. If I un-minimize the program I see a dialog with these 3 lines

[X] Accept clipboard from viewers
[X] Send clipboard to viewers
[X] Send primary selection to viewers

The first two seem to be what I want (the third I have no idea what that means). The key point is that all 3 are checked - they seem to be the default values.

tightvnc does not have a program vncconfig. I uninstalled it from the Pi and installed vnc4server. Again, no copy/past between remote and viewer. I then ran vncconfig in a terminal on the remote. It launched with the 3 options checked and now the copy/paste works. I added it to the startup applications for the user with which I invoke vncserver. It now shows up minimized to the lower panel - same as on the CentOS machines and expands to show 3 options checked.

What I am wondering... If these 3 options are TRUE by default, why do I have to have vncconfig running to make them effective? I just tried terminating vncconfig and I lost copy/paste.



Ken