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Linux remote desktop insanity.

gjc — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:29:37 -0800

Happy late December holidays! I have been fighting with this issue for what seems like forever. The crux: how can I get my Fedora box to "serve" desktops and applications to other machines, without the VNC hack? What I mean is, I've got a bare bones machine sitting in a closet acting as a file server. For the most part, I can do what I need to do via the command line and putty. But I'd like to have it be available to act as a terminal server, in the same manner as Windows Terminal Server or Citrix.

What I don't want to do is leave a GUI console running all the time and just VNC into is as neccessary. First, because that seems wasteful. Second, because this machine has limited hardware and doing it that way is less than optimal performance wise.

I have barely managed to get a connection to it using putty x11 forwarding and Xming. It is a pain to get running, as I have to log into putty and then have it fire off the gnome session and also start the Xming program on my desktop. Worse, it only works for a couple of minutes and then freezes.

I know there is LTSP, but I can't seem to figure it out, and figure out whether it would work the way I want it to. It seems specifically geared to dedicated thin clients- the setup seems to depend on the thin client being linux based.

I know what I ask is possible, because I've seen it. And because the whole concept of Xwindows is that it is network aware.

Alls I want is to be able to double click an icon on my Windows desktop, and have a window pop open where I get the GUI login manager and can log into a session on Fedora. I don't care about sound or printers or anything fancy like that.

(I have spent countless weekends searching through documentation, but like most things Linux, it is sort of a choose-your-own-adventure chicken and egg problem.)

Off with his head!

le morte de bea arthur — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:13:49 -0800

Hopefully simple Ubuntu display question. I've got a little PC running Ubuntu 8.10. I use it mainly as a development server but I also like to use the desktop for various tasks (I'm not really a command-line person) and I do that via VNC from my main PC.

The problem is when I try to boot the Ubuntu machine without a monitor attached. It stops with a warning about running in low graphics mode. I then have to connect a monitor to fix the issue.

What I want is for Ubuntu to boot into the desktop without any warnings. I then want to be able to use VNC to view the desktop. Essentially I want it to behave as if a monitor were attached (without trying to autodetect the screen resolution and refresh rate).

I found this thread on the Ubuntu forums, but it wasn't much help.

Exporting my xsession is this close to working out.

littlegreenlights — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:37:36 -0800

I'm wondering if anyone knows how I might resolve an issue with exporting my X session to a Windows box over SSH. It . . . sort of works, but the vital parts of this particular GUI aren't visible, and I think I've tried every Windows X server known to man. I'm trying to get a new backup system, BakBone NetVault, production-ready. I like everything about it except for the fact that there isn't a locally-installable management client. In order to manage the server, you have to either use the CLI or invoke the GUI, so if you are remotely accessing the server via an ssh session and have ssh set to ForwardX11, you do an 'nvgui&' and your management window pops up and everything is lovely--at least when I'm accessing the server (which is running RHEL 5) from another Linux box (my workstation is Ubuntu, but it seems to work with most distributions I've tried).

However, if I try to do the same thing from a Windows box running an X server, there is no happiness. I've tried MKS X Server, Hummingbird Exceed, Xming, and Xming-mesa, and in every case the core application windows will come up successfully, but sub-windows where detail would normally appear remain totally unpopulated--I bring up the Media Management tools, for example, and the proper window appears, but there's no list of media. There are some screenshots on this page that might give a clearer idea of what the window should look like. Basically everything in the white areas in those screenshots is absent no matter what X server I'm running on my remote Windows machine.

It wouldn't be a big issue, but I know that some of the admins who will be maintaining this installation once it goes fully into production run Windows exclusively. In addition, I can't take full advantage of NetVault's support when they offer WebEx sessions for troubleshooting given WebEx/Ubuntu/Firefox/IEs4Linux problems . . . which is another question for another day, but means I will occasionally need to access the application from a Windows machine. I already run VMWare (and have coLinux downloaded and ready to go as another option) but would prefer a simpler solution such as Xming-PuTTY because I don't feel good about expecting the other admins to jump through that many hoops just to administer one little thing out of many.

I'm not really so hopeful as to think anyone here has tackled this exact problem with this particular application. But does anyone have experience with exporting X sessions who might know what would cause these or similar symptoms? Is there another work-around I haven't considered? I'm open to trying other ways of doing this.

Thanks for your help if you've managed to hang in there this long. :) If I need to provide more information just let me know.

Getting the Ferret up to Speed

Jimbob — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 19:43:56 -0800

What are all the things I need to apt-get, in order to turn my minimal Ubuntu Fiesty Server install into the complete graphical OS? I've downloaded a VMWare image of Ubuntu Fiesty to play with (not yet willing to commit to an upgrade from Dapper on my actual computer). The image was a fairly minimal "Server" version - no Gnome, no Xorg, none of the other applications I've come to expect in Ubuntu.

So, what should I be apt-getting in order to get X, and a decent suite of applications up and running? So far, in my experimentations, I've got Xorg installed (apt-get install xorg), and can get the login screen up, but once I log in I'm left at a completely blank desktop - no icons, no menus. What's the next step?

Modeline blues.

I EAT TAPAS — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 15:46:44 -0800

I got a DVI -> HDMI connector to connect my computer (Gentoo, Xorg 7, Geforce 7600GS) to my HDTV (Philips 30" CRT). It'll only display in 720x480 with awful overscan... regardless of what's in my xorg.conf. Help! So, here's what I've tried.

I first connected a Windows box to try PowerStrip. While I never got it perfect, I came close (and with much higher resolutions than 720x480). PowerStrip reported the following Modelines:

Modeline "1440x900" 96.500 1440 1504 1536 1760 900 903 906 912 +hsync +vsync
Modeline "1920x1080" 63.975 1920 2008 2052 2206 1080 1081 1095 1125 interlace

Now, X will *start* with the above modelines, but I always end up with a 720x480 display, even though that's not defined in xorg.conf at all. I'm sure I'm using the right xorg.conf -- editing the other options will indeed affect what happens when I start the X server, just not the resolutions.

Other pertinent info from the xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVidia Graphics Adapter"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "NoLogo" "true"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP"
Option "IgnoreEDID" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "NVidia Graphics Adapter"
Monitor "Philips30"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1080" "1440x900"
Depth 16
Modes "1920x1080" "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Hebrew input support in X

ori — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:46:56 -0800

How do I add a foreign language (Hebrew) input to X, and how do I switch keyboard layouts? This was easy to set up in Gnome and KDE, but I've since left those for Fluxbox, which doesn't (seem to) have a proprietary configurator. I'm running Debian/Testing, xorg 6.8.2dfsg.

Can I fix these recent horizontal black glitches on this onboard SiS chipset?

adamwolf — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:46:47 -0800

How can I fix my SiS onboard video? What did I even do to break it? I recently reinstalled my girlfriend's Linux machine, adding a hard drive in the process. For some reason, the display shows horizontal glitches and every once in a while blinks black for a few seconds. This is onboard SiS video. It is independent of monitor. This sounds quite like video bandwidth issues, but I'm not exactly certain, because of two reasons. The 99% of the time these horizontal black glitches occur during a keystroke. You can tap out a drum solo on the spacebar, and the flickers will follow as well. Is this typical of video bandwidth issues? Another thing is that assuming it is memory bandwidth issues, I decided to set the display to 640x480@8 bits per pixel. Still horizontal glitches. This makes me say it isn't a memory bandwidth issue. Another test I performed was playing a video. The "glitch rate" didn't increase.

The display also blacks out every once in a while for a few seconds. Here's the kicker--It worked a month ago, and she's never seen the glitches before. I haven't really changed anything except I installed GNOME. However, Xfce4 *also* has this problem. I've tried to see if text mode has this problem, but its hard to see the glitches on a black background. X detects ~64 megs of video memory. This *should* be enough by my calculations for 3.5 frames of 1280x1024@16bpp. I've used alternate monitors and alternate video cables.

What would do this? BIOS settings? Was there an Xorg update recently that would break something? I'll accept "random hardware failure" if there are no other choices, but I can't help but wonder. It's extremely hard to work with this machine, and I'd really hate to have to replace it this soon. I've googled with my usually amazing google-fu, but have had no luck.