Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 07:37:59 -0700 From: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> To: duckeo <duckeo@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Xvnc + inetd Message-ID: <42BEBDC7.7080709@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <8941595405062606254936734d@mail.gmail.com> References: <89415954050626001752c3c470@mail.gmail.com> <42BE9CDB.5040502@u.washington.edu> <89415954050626052730dc30d4@mail.gmail.com> <894159540506260530596e4be9@mail.gmail.com> <42BEA24B.7060109@u.washington.edu> <894159540506260553650b78c@mail.gmail.com> <42BEA983.4080403@u.washington.edu> <8941595405062606254936734d@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
duckeo wrote: >>Ok then. "What sort of DE/WM setup do you plan on having for your >>clients?" is a question you need to ask yourself. >> >> > >Purely KDE for the moment, desktop wise it would be the same for each user. > > > >>Essentially if it's a small number of users and you want to let them >>setup their own X flavor, you could basically set it up as follows: >> >>#!/bin/sh >> >>[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources >>xsetroot -solid grey >>vncconfig -iconic & >> >>startkde& # or whatever X style they like, such as startfluxbox, xfce4-session, etc >> >> > >I'd rather not have to make the user log in via SSH and invoke a vnc >each, or even have vnc listening on X number of ports for different >users. > >What I'd like to happen is users VNC into the box on a particular >port, and be greeted with a Login screen to KDE (kdm). > >The guide I've been roughly following is at >http://oxo.rucus.net/docs/Terminal-Vnc-HOWTO, to give you an idea of >what I was aiming for. > > Hmmm... that's an interesting HOWTO. What the writer is doing is documenting basically how to do the DM stuff for login, but just without the SSH. I don't think that this method is really a good idea at all for security purposes as all data that goes through VNC is unencrypted. Make sure you don't have anyone pass any root passwords, credit card numbers, etc across the network during login or while they are getting logged in :). Setting up a firewall for a set of trusted PCs as close as possible to your VNC machine may be an incredibly wise idea as well while you don't have anything setup for SSH logins. I don't know anything in general to accomplish X forwarding (except paid for solutions such as Reflection X, Hummingbird, etc), so maybe going with VNC is a good idea. So I suggest setting up everything described in the HOWTO, but have SSH keys setup so then people don't have to worry about 'annoying' password based logins via SSH. Read http://www.jfitz.com/tips/ssh_for_windows.html#Automatic_login for more details on how to do this via putty. The only thing I can think of that's causing issues is maybe kdm isn't running on port 177. Have you attempted setting it up to listen on port 177, and also have you checked to see if login via the local box is possible? Testing out to see if that works or not might be something to really try first before seeing whether or not the VNC is at fault. Then, try logging in via another account, see if that works, and go down the line determining what the issue is. If you can't login via VNC, check the console with the VNC server started for any error messages that were displayed during execution (there might be some issues encountered during startup). I would also check the vncserver (invoke 'whereis vncserver' or 'which vncserver') file (I don't think it's binary but an actual script used for listening via TCP but I could be wrong). If it's a script (and hopefully not a binary file), it should contain any relevant information about what variables get setup during execution because vncserver eventually calls Xvnc, which does the actual serving. There might be some variables in vncserver which might help you determine when and how to add information in other commands and files (ie inetd.conf and kdm conf file wherever it is). Also, since you are running everything from a login manager as opposed to a direct VNC invocation, you may need to create the relevant files like ~/.Xsession, etc or setup the system wide Xsession file properly. Hopefully this helps as a start. I have no tried this so I can't guarantee any solutions but hopefully I brought something up which will lead you to a solution. The person who wrote the doc should be advised as to what actual steps need to be taken to make sure this works since the doc lacks some relevant details. Then again, a lot of docs do need to be improved and not just this one :). Take care and good luck :). -Garrett
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?42BEBDC7.7080709>