Tuesday, May 17, 2016

TightVNC on Fedora

After many tries and countless hours of enjoyment:

Setting up Fedora 16 / Tigervnc on a computer that can not run the default build 
Install the KDE spin
Yum update
Login as root
I installed webmin with webmins repo, then the network group and the Postgres SQL server.

yum install tigervnc-server tigervnc-server-module
cp /lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:1.service
nano /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:1.service

Edit the [Service] Section adding your user name and screen # 

[Service]
Type=forking
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vncserver :1 -geometry 1280x1024 -depth 16 -securitytypes=none -fp /usr/share/X11/fonts/misc
ExecStop=/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :1

Exit nano and save the file

systemctl enable vncserver@:1.service

Check if you have fonts loaded
ls /usr/share/X11/fonts/misc
If there are no fonts or you get a directory error
yum install xorg-x11-font*
Check if you have fonts loaded
ls /usr/share/X11/fonts/misc
You should see fonts now

Setup your directory and password
vncpasswd

Start the VNC server
systemctl start vncserver@:1.service

If you get 
Dec 23 08:38:05 lbox vncserver[4563]: vncserver: geometry 1280X1024 is invalid

nano /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:1.service
Edit the 1280X1024 and change the X to lower case x
Save the file and run
systemctl --system daemon-reload

If you get another fail message
grep vnc /var/log/messages

Install the client software and try to connect, if you don't get connected check the port settings
netstat -lnt | grep 590*

I started on 5902 from my Centos 6.1 install but now it is 5901 with this version
UPDATE: VNC listens on port 5900 plus the number of the display

My current Linux box is an Intel D856GLC mother board dated 2003 with an AGP video slot and built in graphics controller, the graphics controller is not supported by the default spin. The Gnome spin would start to load then tell me I had a drive failure, so I tried the Xfce spin with the same results and then the KDE spin, the KDE spin finished the install.

Update:
I did a yum update and after the reboot vncserver would not start: 

grep vnc /var/log/messages

Dec 25 09:44:54 lbox vncserver[833]: Warning: lbox:1 is taken because of /tmp/.X11-unix/X1

the fix: 
rm -f /tmp/.X11-unix/X1


http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-272137.html