JP Vossen on 6 Apr 2008 11:57:21 -0700 |
I've been testing Xubuntu Hardy beta, but one of my killer apps is trivial "remote desktop." As many of you probably know, that's built-in to the Gnome Ubuntu as (wait for it) "System, Preferences, Remote Desktop". But vino is a Gnome app, which a) doesn't work under Xfce and b) would kind of defeat the purpose of running Xfce if it did work and had to load all the Gnome libs anyway. There are a lot of really hairy gazillion-step HOWTOs out there when you Google for xfce remote desktop, but there are some problems with them. First, while I'm capable of implementing them, I don't feel like it. I use Ubuntu because I want it to Just Work without messing around with it. If I wanted to do that kind of thing I'd be using Gentoo. Second, most of the "solutions" I found don't actually give you the current, console session (:0), they give you a new X session (:1 +). The *entire* point of this is to get the existing console desktop, for remote control or t-shooting. I finally grew a brain and went down the output from "aptitude search vnc" line by line, doing an "aptitude show <package>" for likely looking ones. Enter x11vnc [1], which I'd not known about. Not only does it do *exactly* what I wanted on Xubuntu, not only does it mostly Just Work, but it has a 4K+ line man page with an amazing number of options clearly spelled out, in depth, with examples. I'm really impressed with this package. (Can you tell?) The only thing it doesn't do is add a menu item, which is not going to be an issue for the folks on this list. Especially check out the -timeout 300 -unixpw -gui options. For anyone who has to do remote support of X desktops, you might even consider this over vino. I say that because you can set it up to be extra secure by creating a menu item that the user must execute for the remote person to be able access the machine, you can have it timeout and go away, and it has all kinds of different passwd/authentication support. That's as opposed to the vino/Gnome setup where it's on or off as a daemon (more or less), with a static passwd. Of course, you can also tunnel it over SSH, stunnel or SSL (see the man page). See also: Bug #56670, first reported on 2006-08-17 by Caroline Ford Xubuntu needs a VNC server like vino is to Gnome https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xubuntu-meta/+bug/56670 Bug #212704, first reported 10 hours ago by JP Vossen x11vnc should create a menu item https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libvncserver/+bug/212704 Check it out, JP [1] $ aptitude show x11vnc Package: x11vnc State: installed Automatically installed: yes Version: 0.9.3.dfsg.1-1ubuntu1 Priority: optional Section: universe/x11 Maintainer: Ubuntu Core developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com> Uncompressed Size: 1593k Depends: libavahi-client3 (>= 0.6.13), libavahi-common3 (>= 0.6.10), libc6 (>= 2.6.1-1), libjpeg62, libssl0.9.8 (>= 0.9.8e-1), libvncserver0, libx11-6, libxdamage1 (>= 1:1.1), libxext6, libxfixes3 (>= 1:4.0.1), libxinerama1, libxrandr2 (>= 2:1.2.0), libxtst6, zlib1g (>= 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-1) Description: VNC server to allow remote access to an existing X session x11vnc allows one to view remotely and interact with real X displays (i.e. a display corresponding to a physical monitor, keyboard, and mouse) with any VNC viewer. It has built-in SSL encryption and authentication, UNIX account and password support, server-side scaling, single port HTTPS and VNC, mDNS service advertising, and TightVNC and ultraVNC file-transfer. ----------------------------|:::======|------------------------------- JP Vossen, CISSP |:::======| jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org My Account, My Opinions |=========| http://www.jpsdomain.org/ ----------------------------|=========|------------------------------- "Microsoft Tax" = the additional hardware & yearly fees for the add-on software required to protect Windows from its own poorly designed and implemented self, while the overhead incidentally flattens Moore's Law. ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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