[Nottingham] Reconfigure X on remote server

[Martin]

Simon Sleaford wrote:
> Hello
>  
> I've got a remote server that is not giving me a display to my Windows
> XP VNC client. I can SSH to the machine but when I try to VNC is refuses
> the connection. Initially I though X must have failed to start but when
> I "sudo startx" it says 
>  
> *Fatal server error:
> Server is already active for display 0
>         If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock
>         and start again.*
> 
> *Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
>          at **http://wiki.x.org* <http://wiki.x.org/>
> * for help.*
> * ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log
> No protocol specified
> giving up.
> xinit:  Resource temporarily unavailable (errno 11):  unable to connect
> to X server
> xinit:  No such process (errno 3):  Server error.
> xauth:  error in locking authority file /home/itsupport/.Xauthority*
>  
> I'm not really sure what I need to do to get it working again for this
> machine. I want to avoid travelling across town if I can to get to it.
>  
> Can anybody give me a pointer? From the message I can see that it says
> it is already active for display 0 so I'm assuming it's still got the
> monitor attached to it. I've also looked inside /tmp/.X0-lock and see it
> has a job ID so it seems like it is running. Can I remove the file and
> try startx again?

Indeed it looks like an x server is running on that machine.
Remote/virtual x sessions are usually numbered 10 and above.

You shouldn't need to kill the x server on that machine.

The problem might be more that either you have not got x-forwarding
enabled/permitted, or that you are not running any sort of x server on
your *local* machine.

Is VNC trying to open ports that are firewalled?...

Sorry, never needed to use VNC here.


... Now that could make for an interesting talk... ;-)

Hope that gives you a clue.


And there's always the command line!

Good luck,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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