Trouble running a VNC Server


Recommended Posts

I have set up an old celeron 400a on Novell Desktop Linux 9, and am hoping to eventually turn it into a:I have set up an old celeron 400a on Novell Desktop Linux 9, and am hoping to eventually turn it into a:

bandwidth shaper

answering machine

firewall

low bandwidth web/email server

I am hoping to get all of these functions up and running for next school year when I move back to my school home. One of the most important things I would like to do is get VNC up and running, so I can tinker with it from my laptop and keep it headless (we need the monitor for another computer).

So if anyone knows Novell desktop linux, it's prettymuch suse 9.2. Further, I have noticed a problem between what I have been getting stuck at, and suse users have been getting stuck with; in the control panel, the option "Enable Remote Administration" will not stay checked. I follow the instructions (to restart the gui) but everytime I go back to check (ha ha) it is always back to an unchecked state.

Now VNC is always running on this computer, but the problem is that I cannot see the desktop. I can connect, but I just see a blank window with my cursor, and the screen is labeled "nobody's X11 desktop". I have tried many times to read through instructions but none of them seem geared towards the newbies such as myself.

So, I thought to write for help...hoping I could save myself some further sessions of wasted time and no results...i'm really liking linux, it's just extremely frustrating for starters when you can't see any results from all of your labour.

Thanks for your time everyone,

Rob

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/317045-trouble-running-a-vnc-server/
Share on other sites

Yea, I had that once. It is a setup issue and I avoided the problem rather than fixed it.

For a while I installed x11vnc which shares your CURRENT desktop with a remove VNC user (operating in more the style of the Windows VNC servers).

At some point I removed and reinstalled VNC (I use TightVNC on Linux) and I was able to it working the way it was meant to.

So go figure. I never really solved the problem. At least, not intentionally. The problem is no longer there but I don't know how it was resolved. Some things are better off not questioned but just accepted. :D

  • 2 weeks later...
and am hoping to eventually turn it into a:

bandwidth shaper

answering machine

firewall

low bandwidth web/email server

One of the most important things I would like to do is get VNC up and running, so I can tinker with it from my laptop and keep it headless (we need the monitor for another computer).

Now VNC is always running on this computer, but the problem is that I cannot see the desktop. I can connect, but I just see a blank window with my cursor

585878765[/snapback]

Ok for starters why do you need VNC? What does seeing the desktop have to do with using the machine as a bandwidth shaper, answering machine, firewall, etc..

There is NO need to see a desktop to do admin or even setup any of this stuff. You want a headless "server/firewall" - why do you need a GUI desktop? X would not even be installed on a machine like that - what purpose does it serve?

Off the top - I would suggest you look into something like clarkconnect

http://www.clarkconnect.com/

The ClarkConnect solution is built on the stability and security of Linux. The features include:

* Stateful Firewall

* Bandwidth Management

* VPN + Dynamic IP Support

* Content Filter + Weekly Update Service

* Intrusion Prevention + Weekly Update Service

* Resource and Port Monitoring

* Mail Server + Mail/MX Backup Service

* Antispam

* Antivirus

* File Server

* Print Server

* Proxy Server

* Web Server

* Webmail

* Database

As to the answering machine - I do not see that as an addon for the standard distro, but since CC is just a tweaked up fedora distro.. So you can add any type of features you would need - just like you would on any other linux distro..

This might get you started on the answering machine thing

Linux Answering Machine HOWTO

http://www.ilug-hyd.org.in/lamhowto.html

There are other distro's that can do this type of stuff right out of the box - SME server comes to mind - http://contribs.org

Or for that matter pick your FAV distro - install Webmin if it does not already have it.. And way you go.. No need for any X or VNC to the machine to admin it, etc..

  • 5 weeks later...

Greetings.

I have the same problem and i wonder if anybody was able

to fix it.

I know there are other ways of accomplishing the goal, but that

is workarounding it instead of fixing it. Unfortunately

there are reasons for doing it in exact this way right now :/

So back to the issue:

SUsE 9.2 same problem, remote admin is set back to no: automagically

question: why

best regards,

zool

  • 2 weeks later...
Anyone thought of google?

586123757[/snapback]

brilliant question, almost not insulting.

yet you fail to present us the google link that would help us.

trust me, i enrolled into this forum just for this one question.

i would not have given away my email if google would have been able

to help me previously.

Dude I am really sorry you do not know how to search the net for the info you require.. But I have never had any issues with getting remote desktop working on Suse 9.2 nor the newer 9.3 - its a freaking mouse click.. So I have never had a need to search for a fix to a PEBKAC type problem ;)

Besides that - I can not understand the posters reason for needing some type of GUI remote control in the first place.. He clearly states this will be a headless SERVER.. WTF does a headless server need a GUI for?? NOT one service he states he wants to provides has anything to do with a desktop..

What does your lack of reading the documentation, or selecting the right option have to do with his issue? He is using "Novell Desktop Linux 9" which somehow he thinks is 9.2?? How does that have to do with your 9.2 issue??

So if anyone knows Novell desktop linux, it's prettymuch suse 9.2. Further, I have noticed a problem between what I have been getting stuck at, and suse users have been getting stuck with; in the control panel, the option "Enable Remote Administration" will not stay checked. I follow the instructions (to restart the gui) but everytime I go back to check (ha ha) it is always back to an unchecked state.

Now VNC is always running on this computer, but the problem is that I cannot see the desktop. I can connect, but I just see a blank window with my cursor, and the screen is labeled "nobody's X11 desktop". I have tried many times to read through instructions but none of them seem geared towards the newbies such as myself.

585878765[/snapback]

You don't see a blank window really. You see your console. Look inside the file:

/home/YOURUSERNAME/.vnc/xstartup

Open the xstartup file with some sort of text editor. You'll see where it says "twm &" (at the bottom most likely).

If you use KDE you'd replace "twm &" with "startkde &" without the quotation marks of course.

If you use GNOME I don't remember. Its been awhile since I've actually used a desktop manager in linux.

Anyway, I do agree with the rest of the group here though. You don't need a Desktop Manager. Big unneeded resource hog. Now I suspect you want one, because you are pretty new to Linux. So what I'd suggest is ClarkConnect (as someone else suggested), Webmin, etc. They are web-based control panels written in perl and such. So its light on resources and can still make it easier or at the very least, less tedious on you.

Good luck.

Forgot to add. You do need to save the text document: xstartup after you change it and restart VNC.

Edited by dotRoot
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Just pull a 4Chan and ignore the UK gov, or better troll them. It's not like they can enforce the fine across border.
    • It has NEVER been shown that all these overreaching creepy methods of surveillance have ever saved a child or prevented a terrorist attack. Not a single one. It's the kind of people like you who just wave it away as "paranoid conspiracy" that makes big tech and governments this creepy mass data hoarding entities. Not only that, 3/4 of these surveillance ideas undermine the very foundations of safe online communication because they always want to have a backdoor in everything "just in case" they might need it to... checks the notes "save the children". If you put a backdoor into encryption chain there is no encryption chain anymore. You know what encryption keeps safe? Your medical records, your online shopping and credit card during payment, your photos in the cloud, your emails, your passwords, everything. There is ZERO guarantee only the good guys will use it. And if you think police suddenly can't apprehend child abusers because of encryption, Epstein was running his entire sex trafficking ring using GMail which is not even encrypted end to end. Or to make matters even worse, USA has a **** and a good buddy of Epstein as a president. Absolutely NOTHING has been done to address it. Maxwell just got a better "hotel" room as a reward. This clearly shows how they absolutely don't really care about the children but they care about the absolute control over all of us. And you're defending them here. Good grief. On top of constant attempts to insert backdoors into encryption chain, the entire age verification nonsense is again entirely over reaching, creepy, invades everyone's privacy with premise of yet again "protecting the children" instead of demanding device makers to provide simple and powerful tools for PARENTS to control how their children use devices and what they do on them. THIS would be the way, not the stupid age verification for everyone. Imagine if government would be dictating companies how their phones work and not the company's IT department. The parents should be the IT department to their children. And for everyone excusing "they are not knowledgeable enough" buuuuuulsheat. We live in a digital age, if you have children now, you absolutely are well versed in digital everything at least to basic extent. If you're not, how do you even function in these times then? Reality is that parents are just lazy and don't want to deal with this. They want government to raise their kids because they are too busy scrolling stupid Instagram and Tiktok or some bs.
    • You could make the argument that K should not be included, but FC, the fried chicken, is not the framework, it's the product. It's the Paint in Paint.NET. A closer analogy is if KFC included the name of the deep fryer they used. HennyPennyFC.
    • Flying as the central point eh... As a massive Spyro fan who has replayed the Reignited Trilogy three times and the originals 4 times... I have some doubts, but maybe...
    • Apple is expanding Private Cloud Compute beyond its own data centers by Pradeep Viswanathan At WWDC 2026, as part of the improved Apple Intelligence capabilities, Apple today announced that it is expanding Private Cloud Compute (PCC), its privacy-focused cloud infrastructure for Apple Intelligence, beyond its own data centers for the first time. Private Cloud Compute was designed to handle Apple Intelligence requests that are too complex to run fully on-device. The PCC system does not store user data and does not allow Apple or anyone else to access user requests. Last year, Apple also expanded its Security Bounty program with rewards of up to $1 million for researchers who could find serious vulnerabilities in PCC. Until now, Apple's PCC data centers were using Apple's own silicon. As part of the expansion, Apple is working with Google and NVIDIA to run new Apple Intelligence workloads on Google Cloud systems powered by NVIDIA GPUs. Apple will be using this new infrastructure to execute more demanding AI tasks while maintaining the same privacy and security guarantees of PCC. The new implementation uses NVIDIA Confidential Computing with NVIDIA GPUs, Intel CPUs with TDX, and Google’s Titan chip. Apple says it has worked with Google to build additional protections beyond a traditional confidential computing deployment. Despite the expansion to third-party data centers, Apple claims that its core PCC requirements remain unchanged, including stateless computation, no privileged runtime access, non-targetability, and verifiable transparency. The company highlighted that it will continue to control the PCC software stack, and Apple devices will only trust PCC software that has been cryptographically approved by Apple. To take security to the next level, Apple mentioned that it is maintaining an append-only ledger of Google Cloud hardware that is part of the PCC fleet. The company claims this will help reduce the risk of supply chain attacks. In addition to AI infrastructure, Apple also worked with Google to use technologies behind the Gemini family of models to build the next generation of Apple Foundation Models to power Apple Intelligence features across on-device and cloud workloads. As expected, for more demanding AI tasks like agentic tool use and complex reasoning, Apple will rely on the expanded PCC infrastructure running on Google Cloud. The expansion of PCC on Google Cloud will gradually ramp toward the full set of protections during the summer preview period. As before, Apple will also publish binaries for public inspection, provide research tooling, and give researchers access to live PCC nodes in research mode through the Apple Security Bounty Program.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Very Popular
      Captain_Eric earned a badge
      Very Popular
    • One Month Later
      amusc earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Proficient
      Eric Biran went up a rank
      Proficient
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      506
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      222
    3. 3
      ATLien_0
      92
    4. 4
      +Edouard
      86
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      81
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!