Debian Bullseye - Synaptic not starting in VNC session

I have a Debian machine that runs in mostly-headless mode. I connect to it via VNC, which runs on desktop :2.

It has been recently upgraded to Bullseye. Since the upgrade, I can only run Synaptic (synaptic-pkexec) on the computer itself. It starts fine with password prompt. It works from both the menu item and terminal.

When running in remote VNC session, the menu item does nothing, but I can see (and subsequently kill) the process for synaptic in ps -e list. Running synaptic-pkexec in terminal hangs the terminal until Ctrl-C is pressed, and again nothing happens.

Did anyone experience and fix the same?

PS. I plan to upgrade to Bookworm in the near future - will it self-fix there? If yes, I will just proceed with upgrade.

if I understand well probably it is put on :0, not on :2. So it is on another display. But it is only a guess.

Originally Posted by pan64 if I understand well probably it is put on :0, not on :2. So it is on another display. But it is only a guess.

Thanks, I could have the same guess. But how should I route it to :2?

synaptic-pkexec is a small script executing pkexec synaptic
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1254...n-as-root-user

Originally Posted by pan64 synaptic-pkexec is a small script executing pkexec synaptic https://askubuntu.com/questions/1254...n-as-root-user

I see. However, I don't understand how I can re-route the application to show on my desktop rather on :0.

you can modify that synaptic-pkexec script to contain something like this: pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY synaptic
but you need to check it. You might want to save the original script before.

Originally Posted by pan64 you can modify that synaptic-pkexec script to contain something like this: pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY synaptic but you need to check it. You might want to save the original script before.

I tried to run it.. it does not work.