Making vncserver work on Ubuntu

The VNC server on Ubuntu Edgy and Feisty is busted and that has been true for some time. However, the VNC server from Debian Etch works just fine on Ubuntu, with one simple work-around for font directory location. Here is how to get it working in Ubuntu Feisty:

1. Download the latest vnc4-common package to your home directory via packages.debian.org.
2. Download the latest vnc4-server package to your home directory via packages.debian.org
3. Type the following at a command prompt:
   • cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
   • mkdir fonts note - don't worry if it says the directory already exists, that's okay.
   • cd fonts
   • mv encodings encodings- again, don't worry if it says encodings doesn't exist, that's okay.
   • ln -s /usr/share/fonts/X11/* .
   • cd
   • dpkg -i vnc4-common*.deb
   • dpkg -i vnc4server*.deb
   • apt-get install xvnc4viewer
4. Run vnc4server the first time:
   • vnc4server -depth 16 -geometry 1024x768 :1
5. If all went well, you should have been prompted for a new password to use for connecting to the vnc server, then it should have started. Connect to the vncserver to make sure it started up correctly:
   • xvnc4viewer localhost:1
6. You should have gotten a window with a rather sparse twm configuration. (If not, check the log file that the vnc4server command created to see why not!). This probably isn't what you want. So edit the file ~/.vnc/xstartup to look something like this (make a copy of the file to another name first!):

   • #!/bin/sh

     export KDEHOME="${HOME}/.vnckde"
     xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
     vncconfig &
     startkde &

     # gnome-session vncsession &

7. If you don't want a separate eyecandy-less KDE configuration for your VNC sessions (I have lots of memory and CPU thus I run my regular KDE with lotsa eye candy but that really doesn't travel well over the Internet), remove the KDEHOME line. If you want gnome rather than kde, comment out the startkde line and uncomment the gnome-session line. I also specify a vnc-specific session for the gnome-session line so that it will (hopefully) co-exist with a desktop gnome session.
8. Now you're ready to test your new startup:
   • vnc4server -kill :1
   • vnc4server -depth 16 -geometry 1024x768 :1
   • xvnc4viewer localhost:1

You should now have a vnc viewer window with your choice of desktops. As long as you keep a VNC server running on your computer, you can now connect to your home computer from work (or vice versa) by setting up your firewall or gateway to forward port 5901 to the computer you wish to connect to, then running the xvnc4viewer or the Windows VNCviewer icon on the computer you're connecting from. This also makes a dandy way of accessing a real Linux desktop from a Windows computer in another room. The only real issue here is that neither Firefox nor Thunderbird much like the notion of you being logged in twice, and thus you can't leave a Firefox or Thunderbird open on the VNC desktop. No biggie, just use Konqueror or Epiphany as your web browser (depending on whether you're on Gnome or KDE) and use Evolution or kmail for your email.

Another issue: what to put for -geometry. I put 1024x768 but if you have a big screen on your client computer, you'll want to put something bigger (something smaller really doesn't work for a number of reasons to do with KDE and Gnome UI design). -depth 8 would be faster, but a number of programs will not work with that, thus -depth 16.

-- Badtux the Linux Penguin