(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi all,

I do a lot of remoting into our family computers from abroad and mostly use VNC servers and viewers (most of the PCs are Windows-based, but I loathe Remote Desktop)

I installed a VNC server onto my old tinker box (running Puppy Lucid 5.28 w/ update 004) the other day, but...if I stay remotely connected to it through VNC for an extended period of time (say, 10+ minutes), the connection will disconnect and then when trying to reconnect I'll either just get a blank red screen in the VNC viewer or nothing will happen at all until I restart the computer the server is running on or restart X

Any ideas what might be causing this and how to fix it? I have no such issues on my windows machines and can stay connected for fun indefinitely when connecting to them from Linux or from another Windows machine. (I should note, the VNC server on my Lucid 5.28 box will start acting odd like this regardless of if I am connecting through VNC via WinXP, Win7, or even other Linux flavors )

I had tried a different VNC .pet which didn't crap out like this one, but it crashed much more often so I had to revert back to this one because I can at least use the computer normally for awhile before it messes up.

I hate to bump my thread, but just doing it once (I know a lot of posts happen on this forum, so I thought maybe somebody with useful info missed my thread. I will not bump it again if I get no replies as it is not a big worry )

Just to piggy-back on this thread.

I'm having problems getting VCN server to work on Slacko.

Pet seems to load ok and htop shows it up and running but I just can't make a connection.

I have VCN running on a DSL machine and have no problem with it.

I used this thread and am trying to use the puppy5 pet...

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=63122

Thanks for any help available.

in answer to the slacko query I have been using tightvnc along with x11vncserver for ages

no problem connecting to a variety of my household machines across the network

also use wolgui to wake up etho connected machines too - excellent

I have dialled in from an external (internet) connection with port forwarding set on my router, only downside is the ip address lease changing so use teamviewer instead

not sure if the same is available for lucid though

I kept coming back to this problem and finally found a solution.

I tried about 3 or 4 different vnc packages and the only one that works for me is the x11vnc_server-0.9.4B.pet from the following thread.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=27424

I installed the package and ran the firewall wizard to made an exception for port 5900 and it is working like a charm.

I installed Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 and one of my first tasks was to install a VNC server. I installed the x11vnc_server-0.9.4B.pet and it seems to be working great.

seem to be a neglected area.... x11vnc is so basic it can't go wrong but such as tightVNC usually needs reconfiguring with every change to the puppy X launching configuration which is common.... unless its done properly it won't work. A shame as such as that provides a true multiuser vnc server which is sometimes needed and some other useful features.

I don't have anything made for recent puppies...last time i set it up was on puppy 4...I have lucid here but a package made would probably fail on precise/slacko.... back to the problem mentioned earlier.

mike

ps if you are working linux to linux then ssh / X forwarding is a nice option.

One problem I have noticed is that the IP address seems to be fluctuating between the regular IP of puppypc (for example 192.168.1.131) and needing to have :0 appended, as in 192.168.1.131:0 so I'm not sure what's up with that.

Hmm well the :0 part denotes the default display or 1 depending how you look at it... with ssh forwarding it fails without it and I would normally expect to see it with vnc too .. sometimes its :0,0 (device 1, display 1 or similar.
Such as tightvnc would create a new virtual display for each user so there would be :1 :2 and so on.
x11vnc may not need it since it only works with one display/user anyway..indeed if I remember it simply serves out the existing display so you can have mouse fights...

mike

mikeb wrote:Hmm well the :0 part denotes the default display or 1 depending how you look at it... with ssh forwarding it fails without it and I would normally expect to see it with vnc too .. sometimes its :0,0 (device 1, display 1 or similar.
Such as tightvnc would create a new virtual display for each user so there would be :1 :2 and so on.
x11vnc may not need it since it only works with one display/user anyway..indeed if I remember it simply serves out the existing display so you can have mouse fights...

mike

Yay! Mouse fights!

Interestingly, this issue seems to not occur when connecting via the Mac OS X built-in VNC Screen Sharing client. It consistantly works without the :0 in OS X.
But in tightvnc viewer for Windows, it seems to fluctuate between needing the :0 to be appended and needing for the :0 to not be appended.

It might autodetect the free display.....

I would expect 1 to be the lowest number as 0 would be the local display
Its a while since I used this stuff but windows does not work like linux ...there is no x server and client ...the central computer and dumb terminal arrangement.... so would work a little differently under the hood.

mike

mikeb wrote:It might autodetect the free display.....

I would expect 1 to be the lowest number as 0 would be the local display

Interesting.

I've discovered another problem with x11vnc_server though. It doesn't seem to support shift key functionality. In other words, pressing the shift key has no effect, you get the lowercase character for any key pressed regardless of whether or not the shift key was held down.

Pretty sure this is a x11vnc server-side issue since the (no-shift-key) problem occurs regardless of client/platform/keyboard used to connect remotely.

It turns out that keyboard events are being sent by the VNC client, but not properly interpreted. To get his working, you need to add a command line option to the x11vnc script: -xkb.

there ya go..... so x11vnc -xkb and then the rest of the options.

Seems like versions newer than 2010 should do this by default

mike

Thanks! I tried x11vnc -xkb in terminal on Puppy but that didn't fix it. Not even sure what I'm doing. Is there a config file for x11vnc somewhere?

I found this: http://karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html
tried some of the commands but nothing seems to be happening.

(sorry about the double post. my mistake)

Hmm thats all a web search brought up and it seemed to be more of a problem with windows clients but the problem does seem to be related...ie incorrect key interpretation.

A bit out of ideas on this one

mike

Oddly, one uppercase character does work... holding down shift when pressing the comma key does produce the expected "<" character.

I found the solution right under my nose. It was discussed toward the end of the thread where the x11vnc pet packages are.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 4&start=15

Ah ha.... well x11vnc is the mickey mouse version of vnc so I suppose the answers will be found in puppy land somewhere

Well another solution for the wiki..... sorry well minded search

by the way does x11vnc work if X is not running on the server?

mike

mikeb wrote:by the way does x11vnc work if X is not running on the server?

I haven't tried that. I'd need to learn how to prevent x from running in the first place before I could test it, but I don't really have a need for that at the moment.