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Topic: [SOLVED] Unable to share existing X session (via "vnc")  (Read 453 times) previous topic - next topic
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[SOLVED] Unable to share existing X session (via "vnc")

I installed 'tigervnc' on my Artix system and had no problem running a client from another system ('remmina') which connected to a new virtual display on my Artix system.  Which isn't what i wanted.  So, looking into it, x0vncserver is supposedly precisely for this.   x11vnc, as well.  After x0vncserver (running from the cmd line) behaved exactly the same way as running 'vncsession' (running via 's6-svstat /run/service/vncserver'... this is all from the 'tigervnc' packages) i installed and tried x11vnc.  Exactly the same result.  *Then*, the interesting thing... without running *any* vnc server i tried it and, again, got exactly the same result... a new virtual display.  WTF?!  I looked at all the processes running on my system to see what might be acting as a vnc server and the only thing that looked "possible" (but not really) was the process 'kscreen_backend_launcher'.  I looked into this to see if this could be acting as a vnc server (didn't try to kill it and see), and it doesn't seem like.  Does anyone have a clue what might be going on?  One theory i have is that maybe x0vncserver or x11vnc would allow connection to the existing X session, if only some other server weren't intercepting the connection.   So, until i can figure out how it is possible to connect via remmina with *no* vnc server running, it doesn't seem like i'm necessarily really troubleshooting the failure of x0vncserver or x11vnc to allow connection to my existing X session.

Re: Unable to share existing X session (via "vnc")

Reply #1
From a quick search it seems remmina has a debug log in the GUI. That should give more information as to what is happening in the various scenarios you describe.

x11vnc, when started from a terminal provides full information about what it's doing.
I've no experience with x0vncserver but would be surprised if there isn't a way to get similar output.

Post the output (and commands / reminna setup screenshots) from both sides of the connection and maybe someone will spot what is going on?

Without that so far all I can see is 'doesn't work'

Re: Unable to share existing X session (via "vnc")

Reply #2
From the remmina debug log (thanks for that) it seems that, when a number of things fail, eventually it just defaults to opening an ssh session in a terminal window.  Thus my mistaken idea that i had actually connected to a vnc server when none was running.  So, now it's back to figuring out what has to be specified to actually connect successfully to the vnc server.

(Am i supposed to edit my original post rather than posting a new message -- as i've just done?)

Re: Unable to share existing X session (via "vnc")

Reply #3
(Am i supposed to edit my original post rather than posting a new message -- as i've just done?)
New post.

Please post the full details of what you are doing.
Commands and GUI screenshots
Output.

Otherwise It's just a guessing game.

SOLVED: Re: Unable to share existing X session (via "vnc")

Reply #4
Ok.  It's all sorted.  'remmina' (running on Manjaro) has as an *optional* dependency 'libvncserver', which i didn't realize when installing 'remmina', so the only connection options listed, when running it, were SSH and X2GO (which means nothing to me).  I didn't realize that i needed to select what was missing.  Thanks for pointing me to the 'remmina' log which got this sorted.