Knowledge Base (Posts about vnc)

Minimalize Artemis display for vnc

bgstack15 — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 12:30:29 GMT

A fellow netizen named NoseyNick has a great plan for making Artemis run way better on an x11vnc display: blank out the textures. He also has great scripts to use if you want to run an Artemis game server on somebody else's computer.

Resize x11vnc session

bgstack15 — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 12:53:00 GMT

Here's a cool trick I devised. This idea is original to me. I remember using spice guest tools in spice guests in libvirt/qemu/kvm/virt-manager to automatically (or at least make available) change screen resolutions.

Remmina as a vnc viewer of course can be resized, and I have a script that I run on the client side, to ssh to the target x11vnc server.

The idea is that on the client x11 instance, you run the following command which finds the window with that hostname as the title (hardcoded to only Remmina windows), and then passwordlessly sshes to that host and uses the XAUTHORITY and DISPLAY info to add a xrandr resolution to this desired window size and then uses that resolution.

Supporting Linux desktop support clients with x11vnc, Wireguard, and Remmina

bgstack15 — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 13:30:19 GMT

I have a Linux desktop support customer! (Read: I have a friend for whom I set up a Ubuntu desktop system. It's not ideal I realize, but it's better than Windows.)

On his Ubuntu desktop, I set up Wireguard as a peer to my main wg peer on my network. When his computer is on, it automatically connects. If he needs help where I need to see his screen, I connect over ssh and forward a port:

ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900

And then once there I su - customername and start x11vnc.

x11vnc -display :0 -once -localhost

And now on my client side I run Remmina and connect to localhost as type vnc. And then I can work on the same console session that my customer sees, while we're on the phone together.

Backstory

I already had a wireguard peer set up on my network for a multitude of reasons. Adding wireguard to autostart Ubuntu is well-established and outside the scope of this document. I remember reading in the past about some way to connect to an existing X11 console session, and x11vnc is the solution for that type of operation. Teamviewer is not FLOSS, and I gave it up years ago. Before that, I used LogMeIn.

Changing screen resolution on Linux terminal server

bgstack15 — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 12:40:00 GMT

If you're using xvnc on Linux (for example, if you're running Xfce on xrdp on Fedora) and you want to resize the display, here's a way to do it.

DISPLAY=:10 xrandr --output VNC-0 --mode 1024x768

You could also use an --auto instead of a --mode XxY setting. Apparently I like to redo my own work. Check out resize.sh from my bgscripts package.

for word in $( xrandr --listactivemonitors | awk 'NR != 1 { print $NF; }'; ); do xrandr --output ${word} --auto 1>/dev/null 2>&1; done

List current xvnc sessions in xrdp so you can reconnect to your old one

bgstack15 — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 13:34:27 GMT

tl;dr

{ echo "user pid Xdisplay port"; { ps -ef | awk '/Xvnc :[[:digit:]]+/ {print $1,$2,$9}' | while read tu tpid tvnc; do sudo netstat -tlpn | awk -v "tpid=${tpid}" '$0 ~ tpid {print $4;}' | sed -r -e 's/^.*://;' -e "s/^/${tu} ${tpid} ${tvnc} /;" ; done ; } | sort -k3 ; } | column -c4 -t

The story

I connected to a gnome session on a terminal server, and disconnected. I wanted to reconnect to my current session, but apparently I got a new X session. After some research, I learned you can configure xrdp to prompt for the port number so you can get back to the previous session. However, then you have to know what to type in. After doing a manual ps and netstat, I found some useful numbers. What I needed to enter was the tcp port number, so 5919.

The explanation

You can have an entry in the /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini file like the following block.

[xrdp8]
name=Reconnect
lib=libvnc.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=ask

When you connect over RDP, select the "Reconnect" module and type in a port number, which you can find from the output of the oneliner.

{ echo "user pid Xdisplay port"; { ps -ef | awk '/Xvnc :[[:digit:]]+/ {print $1,$2,$9}' | while read tu tpid tvnc; do sudo netstat -tlpn | awk -v "tpid=${tpid}" '$0 ~ tpid {print $4;}' | sed -r -e 's/^.*://;' -e "s/^/${tu} ${tpid} ${tvnc} /;" ; done ; } | sort -k3 ; } | column -c4 -t


user       pid    Xdisplay  port
mjohnso    11448  :17       5917
mjohnso    12939  :18       5918
bgstack15  1219   :19       5919

References

Weblinks

https://askubuntu.com/questions/133343/how-do-i-set-up-xrdp-session-that-reuses-an-existing-session#360835

Xfce on Xrdp on Fedora 26

bgstack15 — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 13:16:15 GMT

Introduction

This post will demonstrate how to set up a Fedora installation to act as a terminal server that serves desktops over RDP. This will allow Windows computers to connect to it, as well as a GNU/Linux system running xfreerdp clients. These instructions should be easy to follow on any RHEL-based distros, and easily adapted to others. The copy-paste segments have been tested on Fedora 26 but the accompanying instructions should guide you in deploying a terminal server on a broad range of GNU/Linux environments.

How to set up xrdp on Fedora

Ensure your desktop environment is installed. For CentOS 7 that would be something similar to yum groupinstall "Server with gui" or yum groupinstall xfce. Install the components necessary for rdp and vnc. When the rdp server allows a user to connect, the user connects to a X windows session in VNC.

yum -y install xrdp tigervnc-server

Set up a firewall rule for the RDP port.

tf=/lib/firewalld/services/xrdp.xml; touch "${tf}"; chmod 0644 "${tf}"
cat <<EOF >"${tf}"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<service>
  <short>Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)</short>
  <description>A RDP service that serves X desktop sessions. Using this allows a Windows client to connect using the built-in mstsc utility!</description>
  <port protocol="tcp" port="3389"/>
</service>
EOF
firewall-cmd --reload
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=xrdp
firewall-cmd --reload

Running xfce or any arbitrary DE

On Fedora, for xfce specifically you need to make sure that X clients are told to run xfce. The vnc services will try to start a window manager, but as of the time of this writing xfce is not included in the list, so it will fail out (or run gnome, if it's present). The file to inspect is /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients, or the per-user settings at ~/.Xclients. For the etc file, it should be fairly obvious how to add to it. Additionally, make sure the file is executable! For Fedora 26 and xfce, you can inspect this patch file, and then either run the patch statement or make the changes yourself manually.

# for all users
tf=/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.patch; touch "${tf}"; chmod 0644 "${tf}";
cat <<'EOFPATCH' >"${tf}"
--- /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients 2017-02-12 00:38:18.000000000 -0500
+++ /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.new 2017-10-14 08:12:34.340524791 -0400
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
 MSESSION="$(type -p mate-session)"
 STARTKDE="$(type -p startkde)"
 STARTLXDE="$(type -p startlxde)"
+STARTXFCE="$(type -p startxfce4)"

 # check to see if the user has a preferred desktop
 PREFERRED=
@@ -25,6 +26,8 @@
    PREFERRED="$STARTKDE"
     elif [ "$DESKTOP" = "LXDE" ]; then
    PREFERRED="$STARTLXDE"
+    elif [ "$DESKTOP" = "XFCE" ]; then
+   PREFERRED="$STARTXFCE"
     fi
 fi

@@ -44,6 +47,9 @@
 elif [ -n "$STARTLXDE" ]; then
     # if neither GNOME nor KDE then LXDE
     exec "$STARTLXDE"
+elif [ -n "$STARTXFCE" ]; then
+    # if none of the above, try XFCE.
+    exec "$STARTXFCE"
 fi

 # We should also support /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.d scripts
EOFPATCH
patch -p1 /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients < /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.patch

And for the individual users (I have yet to test to see if the normal order of resolution of the X files lets this actually override it for the user):

tf=~/.Xclients; touch "${tf}"; chmod 0700 "${tf}";
cat <<EOF > "${tf}"
exec /usr/bin/startxfce4
EOF

And that's it! A sample xfreerdp statement to connect to this service could be:

xfreerdp /sec-rdp /cert-tofu /size:1520x820 /bpp:16 /v:192.168.1.76 -z /disp /audio-mode:0 /wallpaper /themes /u:bgstack15

[![Screenshot of session manager login screen in vnc in

xrdp](/2017/10/freerdp-sesman.png)](/2017/10/freerdp-sesman.png) Login screen after connecting to xrdp service

References

Weblinks

Using the patch utility https://docs.moodle.org/dev/How_to_create_a_patch#Creating_a_patch_using_diff
update file /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients https://docs-old.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Deployment_Guide/s1-x-runlevels.html
https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=8261
General xrdp guide https://hostpresto.com/community/tutorials/using-a-desktop-environment-on-a-centos-7-vps/
Notes about cinnamon on CentOS 7 https://www.techbrown.com/install-cinnamon-2-6-on-fedora-22-centos-7-rhel-7.shtml
xrdp on centos 7 http://idroot.net/tutorials/how-to-install-xrdp-on-centos-7/
http://www.itzgeek.com/how-tos/linux/centos-how-tos/install-xrdp-on-centos-7-rhel-7.html

Cinnamon on VNC on CentOS 7

bgstack15 — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 13:03:34 GMT

Overview

This document describes how to install Cinnamon desktop environment on CentOS 7 for use in VNC. Basically, you can take a headless server and turn it into a virtual desktop controller.

Caveats

Limitations of this design prevent this from scaling up past so many users, so this would be best suited for home or small office use. VNC uses no security. Consider alternatives or additions to this process when security is a consideration.

Installing Cinnamon for VNC

Installing the components

Install the vnc server.

yum install tigervnc-server tigervnc vnc

Install the desktop environment.

yum install cinnamon

Install any applications to be used.

yum install firefox gnome-terminal

Configuring the components

For each user that uses a virtual desktop on this host, you will need a separate systemd service, as well as a vnc password which is separate from the regular user password. Also set up the xstartup file for vnc.

tu=bgstack15
tn=1
sudo cp -p /lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@\:${tn}.service
sed -r -i -e "s//${tu}/g;' /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@\:${tn}.service
systemctl enable vncserver@\:${tn}.service
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port 59$( printf '%02i' "${tn}")/tcp
printf "For user ${tu} please provide new "
su - ${tu} -c vncpasswd
tf=~/.vnc/xstartup
test -f "${tf}" && \cp -p "${tf}" "${tf}.$( date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S" )"; touch "${tf}"; chmod 0755 "${tf}"
cat <<EOF > "${tf}"
unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
exec /usr/bin/cinnamon-session
EOF
systemctl start vncserver@\:${tn}.service

Connecting to the desktop

On a client, run

vncviewer hostname:1