[SOLVED] Recommended VNC server for Linux/Slackware

mfoley · 03-02-2024, 12:13 PM

For many years I used x11vnc which worked great and had some features I liked. I could remote in to the server host and run x11nvc as root and then log in as anybody from any platform and it would connect just fine.

Unfortunately, x11vnc hasn't been maintained in years and no longer works with Slackware 15.0 due to changes in libraries.

I'd like recommendations on what a good VNC server program would be for me. I work remotely on Linux Virtual Machine host computers and need to see the Linux KDE desktop to start/stop the VirtualBox guest VMs (Windows), and configure the VM using the VirtualBox Manager. I'd need to be able to start the VNC server from a remote location. I can get to the Linux host via ssh.

Slackware ships with TigerVNC, but I've not used that and have no idea if it would work for what I want. I intend to do some experimentation with that today, but I don't want to invest a lot of time in that if LQ folks don't really think that's going to work for what I need.

I've also heard that the Remote Desktop connection is available on Linux. Is there any truth to that?

THX

business_kid · 03-02-2024, 12:19 PM

Slackware provides tigervnc in the extra/ directory of the install dvd. Why not try that?

mfoley · 03-02-2024, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Slackware provides tigervnc in the extra/ directory of the install dvd. Why not try that?

It would not install on my first attempt, but I did a slackpkg update, then tried again and it installed.

I'll experiment with it.

business_kid · 03-02-2024, 01:21 PM

Mark this solved?

mfoley · 03-02-2024, 04:04 PM

So, here's my experience thus far ... I recalled some of the reason I didn't use tigerVNC way back when. The documentation is pretty tough to figure out how to start the server. After a couple of hours of surfing I did get it started. One site said to use 'vncserver :1', but that command isn't even listed at the official https://tigervnc.org/ site. That site listed different server commands, vncsession, x0vncserver, Xvnc, and it took some experimenting to settle on "x0vncserver -PasswordFile=.vnc/passwd". The -PasswordFile parameter was needed even though vncpassword created the file in the default location. Furthermore, there is a plethora of options to the x0vncserver command and no simple example was given. Anyway after spending more time than I wanted reseaching this, I got the server running.

Even though this is a new install of tigerVNC, vncviewer doesn't run all all:

Code:

$ vncviewer
vncviewer: error while loading shared libraries: libfltk_images.so.1.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So, I tried REAL VNC viewer on both Linux/KDE and Windows. That did connect, however I get the following message on the client screen every 5-10 seconds:

Code:

Attempting to reconnect to VNC Server... 
Protocol error bad xrle data (or sometimes "bad hextile data)

Not sure about the "xrle" bit, the font is too small for that to be legible. On the server side when this happens I get:

Code:

Sat Mar  2 16:59:28 2024
 VNCSConnST:  Failed to flush remaining socket data on close: write: Broken
              pipe (32)
 VNCSConnST:  closing 192.168.0.2::55495: write: Connection reset by peer (104)
 EncodeManager: Framebuffer updates: 7
 EncodeManager:   Hextile:
 EncodeManager:     Indexed RLE: 20 rects, 27.568 kpixels
 EncodeManager:                  47.2607 KiB (1:2.28354 ratio)
 EncodeManager:     Full Colour: 393 rects, 1.90389 Mpixels
 EncodeManager:                  6.67411 MiB (1:1.08887 ratio)
 EncodeManager:   ZRLE:
 EncodeManager:     Indexed RLE: 34 rects, 2.0736 Mpixels
 EncodeManager:                  109.524 KiB (1:18.4927 ratio)
 EncodeManager:     Full Colour: 34 rects, 2.0736 Mpixels
 EncodeManager:                  2.53645 MiB (1:3.11874 ratio)
 EncodeManager:   Total: 481 rects, 6.07866 Mpixels
 EncodeManager:          9.36367 MiB (1:1.84341 ratio)
 Connections: closed: 192.168.0.2::55495
 ComparingUpdateTracker: 296.525 Mpixels in / 195.845 Mpixels out
 ComparingUpdateTracker: (1:1.51408 ratio)

Sat Mar  2 16:59:29 2024
 Connections: accepted: 192.168.0.2::55509
 SConnection: Client needs protocol version 3.8
 SConnection: Client requests security type VncAuth(2)
 VNCSConnST:  Server default pixel format depth 24 (32bpp) little-endian rgb888
 VNCSConnST:  Client pixel format depth 6 (8bpp) rgb222

This makes it almost impossible for me to actually use the remote session.

So, no, not ready to close the topic. Advice on either making tigerVNC actually work, or suggestions on another VNC package still appreciated.

jefro · 03-02-2024, 05:20 PM

With all the vnc choices is there a clear winner or just choices.

(a bit off topic)

mfoley · 03-02-2024, 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

With all the vnc choices is there a clear winner or just choices.

With "all the vnc choices" I was hoping for some recommendations as a place to start rather than exploring all the choices one-by-one. It took me a couple of hours to test tigerVNC and clearly it is not workable -- or possibly is with more hours of tweaking.

If someone out there is using a VNC server program successfully, that would be a useful recommendation. Recommendations from someone not actually using a VNC server are not useful.

mfoley · 03-03-2024, 01:50 AM

I've continued my experimentation. It appears that the "Attempting to reconnect to VNC Server... / Protocol error bad xrle data (or sometimes "bad hextile data)" error I reported in post #5 is not related to tigerVNC. I got x11vnc server to work and tried a new download of RealVNC Viewer on a different Windows computer. I got the same error. So I tried TightVNC on that same Windows computer (with x11vnc server on Linux). That worked much better, but still an error. After some period of time (a minute-ish) the viewer terminates with "pseudo encoding is not supported". I've tried encoding options "Tight", "Hextile" and "Raw" and they all terminate the viewer with that error. I've found this error on the web, so I'll continue searching for a solution. Also, I'll try using the TigerVNC server and see if that makes any difference. I'll report back ...

Petri Kaukasoina · 03-03-2024, 03:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfoley

Code:

$ vncviewer
vncviewer: error while loading shared libraries: libfltk_images.so.1.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Code:

$ ls -1 ~ftp/slackware64-15.0/extra/tigervnc
the_fltk_package_must_also_be_installed
tigervnc-1.12.0-x86_64-5_slack15.0.txt
tigervnc-1.12.0-x86_64-5_slack15.0.txz
tigervnc-1.12.0-x86_64-5_slack15.0.txz.asc
$ ls -1 ~ftp/slackware64-15.0/extra/fltk    
fltk-1.3.8-x86_64-1.txt
fltk-1.3.8-x86_64-1.txz
fltk-1.3.8-x86_64-1.txz.asc

slacksam · 03-03-2024, 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfoley

If someone out there is using a VNC server program successfully, that would be a useful recommendation. Recommendations from someone not actually using a VNC server are not useful.

TigeVNC works fine here (on Slackware64-15.0, -current and aarch64) and I haven't tested any other VNC solution so far.

For the connection I'm using SSH port forwarding, so the entry in my ~/.ssh/config on the client machine looks like this:

Code:

Host myserver
  Hostname <INTRANET_DOMAIN_OR_IP>
  LocalForward 9001 localhost:5901

Host myserver-ext
  Hostname <INTERNET_DOMAIN>
  LocalForward 9001 localhost:5901

Most of the time I'm using the same user name on the remote machine as on the client machine and use su on the server if I need to change the user.
When connected via SSH (as users), I'm starting the VNC server on the remote machine using

Code:

vncserver :1

and the VNC viewer on the client machine (also as user) I'm using

Code:

vncviewer -PasswordFile ~/.vnc/pwd-myserver.auth localhost:9001

For this line I've created an alias to prevent me from remembering and typing every time.

mfoley · 03-03-2024, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Petri Kaukasoina

Code:

$ ls -1 ~ftp/slackware64-15.0/extra/tigervnc
the_fltk_package_must_also_be_installed

Yes, I just checked 'slackpkg search' and it says fltk is uninstalled. Surprising it didn't get installed when I installed the tigerVNC package. Normally slackpkg is pretty good about installing dependencies. I'll probably do this, but I'm not really using tigerVNC as a client.

Quote:

Originally Posted by slacksam

TigeVNC works fine here (on Slackware64-15.0, -current and aarch64) and I haven't tested any other VNC solution so far.

Thanks slacksam. I appreciate the feedback from someone who's done this. Just a while ago I decided to try tigerVNC on Linux as server and TightVNC as viewer on the remote Windows machine. This worked much better than the x11nvc server / TightVNC viewer combination. I've not received that "pseudo encoding is not supported" error at all. At one point I did get "Failed to recv data from socket" with the tigerVNC/TightVNC combo, but it's been running for aboutn 1/2 an hour now and no problem. On the Linux/server side I use:

Code:

x0vncserver -display=:0 -PasswordFile=.vnc/passwd

This is as a normal user who has an X session open on the host. That's not a big problem because this computer boots with KDE set to auto-login the user in order to AutoStart the Virtual Machine. Before Slackware 15.0 x11vnc would start without needing an existing X session running. This was convenient as I could start x11vnc as root at boot-time and then connect remotely at my leisure. But as of 15.0 that didn't work and I haven't used VNC much since. Lately, however, I've needed VNC, hence this thread.

I think I have a working combination now. Normally I don't need VNC since this Linux machine hosts a Windows VM and I just Remote Desktop into it. But, if I need to tweak VM settings on the VirtualBox Manager I need the Linux desktop.

Thanks to all who contributed!

slacksam · 03-04-2024, 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfoley

Normally slackpkg is pretty good about installing dependencies.

No, slackpkg does not support dependency resolution. On a full Slackware installation you get all packages installed, also the needed dependencies. That's why a full install is recommended to get a working system (see https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install#install). But the packages in extra/, like TigerVNC, aren't included in the full install, so you need to check the dependencies manually. So that's no bug in slackpkg.

mfoley · 03-06-2024, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slacksam

No, slackpkg does not support dependency resolution. On a full Slackware installation you get all packages installed, also the needed dependencies. That's why a full install is recommended to get a working system (see https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:install#install). But the packages in extra/, like TigerVNC, aren't included in the full install, so you need to check the dependencies manually. So that's no bug in slackpkg.

Huh, I guess I'm just used to using 'sgq -p' to build a dependency queue for sbopkg. I don't know that I've ever tried installing slackpkg extra packages with dependencies before. I suppose "checking the dependencies manually" means trying to run it and see what happens!

slacksam · 03-07-2024, 02:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfoley

Huh, I guess I'm just used to using 'sgq -p' to build a dependency queue for sbopkg. I don't know that I've ever tried installing slackpkg extra packages with dependencies before. I suppose "checking the dependencies manually" means trying to run it and see what happens!

If the failing application is a binary, missing .so libraries, then the dependencies usually can be found by running ldd, like so:

Code:

ldd /usr/bin/vncviewer | grep -i found

jefro · 03-07-2024, 03:26 PM

I looked at this question and never got a great answer for my own use. I considered ones that supported game mode or 3d but haven't installed one.