Big Cat to the Rescue
Charly's Column – Tiger VNC
Sys admin columnist Charly enumerates the computers in his household and makes it clear that commuting between them would be an unreasonable burden on his personal energy balance. Instead he lets a tiger go the distance for him.
My powerful Linux workstation is in my study up in the attic, because its fan would unnecessarily heat up my living room. The family PC is quiet; it's in the small hobby corner along with a couple of half-finished Lego sets, a few Raspberry Pis, a laptop, and a MIDI controller, which I dabble with for relaxation. Then there are the two small test servers in the storeroom next to the kitchen where I try out software before I write about it.
SSH prevents me from burning too many calories when running between the dispersed machines. But if I want to show a host's whole desktop, then it's time for Virtual Network Computing (VNC). To access all of these machines, I recently checked out Tiger VNC [1]. On the workstation in my study, I typed the following command for quick installation:
sudo apt install tigervnc-standalone-server tigervnc-xorg-extension
In /etc/vnc.conf
, I replaced the
$vncStartup = "/etc/X11/Xvnc-session";
line with
$vncStartup = "$ENV{HOME}/.vnc/xstartup";
and saved the file from Listing 1 in the Ohm/.vnc
directory. vncpasswd
sets a VNC password, which should not be identical to that of the user. Now I can choose whether the user can only watch from a distance or actually do something.
Listing 1
xstartup
01 #!/bin/sh 02 # Start Desktop 03 [ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup 04 [ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources 05 vncconfig -iconic & 06 dbus-launch --exit-with-session gnome-session &
This completes everything on the server side. I fired up the VNC server by typing vncserver
(without sudo
; root rights are not required). It launched, but I only saw a Connection refused
when trying to connect. What's going on? The output from lsof | grep LISTEN
sheds light on the subject. The VNC server has only bound to localhost
. I stop the server with vncserver -kill
. The man page, which you only read when something goes wrong, provides the solution:
vncserver :1 -localhost no
Now the server accepts connections on all interfaces. Time to move on to the clients.
Tigers, Everywhere
I installed the Tiger VNC client on all my Linux computers by typing
sudo apt install tigervnc-viewer
The server connection is opened with:
xtigervncviewer -SecurityTypes VncAuth,TLSVnc -passwd /home/<charly>/.vnc/passwd <10.0.0.54>:1
Of course, you need to adapt the IP address to match your own server.
From the selection of clients [2], I tried the macOS version on the living room laptop. (My favorite audio tool is unfortunately not available for Linux.) However, the macOS Tiger doesn't convince me. Since VNC is widespread, an alternative was quickly found; Chicken [3] was swapped in as a replacement (Figure 1). Another handful of calories that I don't have to waste by moving my legs.
Infos
- Tiger VNC: https://tigervnc.org
- Tiger VNC Clients: https://bintray.com/tigervnc/stable/tigervnc/1.9.0
- Chicken: https://sourceforge.net/projects/chicken/
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
![Learn More](https://www.linux-magazine.com/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/media/linux-magazine-eng-us/images/misc/learn-more/834592-1-eng-US/Learn-More_medium.png)
News
-
NVIDIA Released Driver for Upcoming NVIDIA 560 GPU for Linux
Not only has NVIDIA released the driver for its upcoming CPU series, it's the first release that defaults to using open-source GPU kernel modules.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 24.07 Released
If you’re into rolling release Linux distributions, OpenMandriva ROME has a new snapshot with a new kernel.
-
Kernel 6.10 Available for General Usage
Linus Torvalds has released the 6.10 kernel and it includes significant performance increases for Intel Core hybrid systems and more.
-
TUXEDO Computers Releases InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 Laptop
Sporting either AMD or Intel CPUs, the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 is an extremely compact, lightweight, sturdy powerhouse.
-
Google Extends Support for Linux Kernels Used for Android
Because the LTS Linux kernel releases are so important to Android, Google has decided to extend the support period beyond that offered by the kernel development team.
-
Linux Mint 22 Stable Delayed
If you're anxious about getting your hands on the stable release of Linux Mint 22, it looks as if you're going to have to wait a bit longer.
-
Nitrux 3.5.1 Available for Install
The latest version of the immutable, systemd-free distribution includes an updated kernel and NVIDIA driver.
-
Debian 12.6 Released with Plenty of Bug Fixes and Updates
The sixth update to Debian "Bookworm" is all about security mitigations and making adjustments for some "serious problems."
-
Canonical Offers 12-Year LTS for Open Source Docker Images
Canonical is expanding its LTS offering to reach beyond the DEB packages with a new distro-less Docker image.
-
Plasma Desktop 6.1 Released with Several Enhancements
If you're a fan of Plasma Desktop, you should be excited about this new point release.