[Nottingham] VNC black screen (XDM declaring seesion dead)

[Camilo Mesias]

Hi,


> I know I'm not in Nottingham anymore but I'm hoping someone here can
> still hit me with a clue stick.

I'm not in Nottingham either but we use vnc like that so I'll try to help.

> /etc/sysconfig/vncservers

We never tried that.

> This works, but if anyone wants to change their resolution, color depth,
> add a new screen or remove a screen, all the screens have to be killed
> and restarted. This is no use.

What would be really great would be XRandR (or however it's spelled)
but it isn't available on the vnc software I've found. There's a
patched VNC server that allows rotate but there's not enough code in
there to allow resizing (only one size is supported). What we would
really like is for the client to change (eg. from a full desktop
screen, 1280x1024 to a laptop widescreen, 1280x800). We could change
the client window size to fit the screen then resize the desktop with
XRandR. Maybe one day...

> So I'm trying it the command-line way. I start a server using
>
> vncserver -query <machinename> <other options like geometry>

That's what we use but without the -query. IE. ssh or putty onto the
server then run vncserver

> XDM: too many retransmissions, declaring session dead
[...]
> Any ideas why xdm is declaring the session dead? Why does xdm care? How
> can I stop it caring?

Have you tried without the query option? Are you running xdm at all -
check with ps. Try to find where it came from. Check your xstartup
file in the .vnc directory in your home - is it running xdm there? For
what it's worth we prefer xfce as the desktop. My xstartup looks
something like this:

 #!/bin/sh
 [ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
 [ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
 vncconfig -iconic &
 xset fp+ unix/:7100
 startxfce4 &