Introduction

This tutorial details how to share your current Linux desktop with an outside party using x11vnc. If x11vnc is not on your computer you may download it from here. It must be compiled and installed using the standard GNU make tools (./configure; make; make install).

The user accessing the VNC server must have a terminal program with access to ssh (for tunneling) and a VNC client. For Mac I recommend the free opensource client Chicken of the VNC. For windows you will need putty or a cygwin installation and a VNC client such as tightVNC. Most Linux distros already have a VNC client called vncviewer.

setting up the VNC server

starting a VNC server to view a current session

To share your current session, type the following command in a terminal session on the computer whose screen you are sharing:

starting a VNC server with an independent session

To start a new X11 session for remote viewing using vnc run:

(If this is your first time running vncserver, you'll get only a basic X11 environment. To restore your normal Gnome windowing system, you need to uncomment two line in your ~/.vnc/xstartup script and respawn vncserver.)

Connecting with VNC

VNC to a computer directly accessible from the outside

This is easy. Just use your client to open up a connection to: <server>:5900

Some programs reference desktop numbers instead of ports: 5900 corresponds to desktop 0, 5901 to 1, 5902 to 2, etc...

VNC to a computer behind the firewall

To access a computer behind the firewall, you must first tunnel through agni. From a Mac OS X, Linux, or cygwin terminal type the following command:

xxxx is an unused 4-digit local port number. If you are not running a VNC server on the client machine use 5900. You will be prompted for your agni password. It is possible to set up this tunnel in Windows using putty, but you are on your own.

Now use your VNC client to open up a connection to: localhost:xxxx

Lab Resources/VNC (last edited 2009-07-24 20:30:34 by bjerre)