tigervnc

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I'm trying to get VNC running on RHEL 7.3 so I can run some firmware updates. The servers were installed pretty barebones by someone else and I am fairly new to Redhat. Do I have to have Gnome or KDE to run VNC or is there a lighter weight alternative? Or am I doing something stupid like starting it as root when I should start it as the user?

Below are details of what I've been trying. I've modified real names for myuserid and myserver, in case anyone questions that.

I've followed the instructions to copy /usr/lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service to /etc/systemd/system/vncserver-myuserid@.service.

I vi'd /etc/systemd/system/vncserver-myuserid@.service to change the following 2 lines for myuserid and to add -localhost.
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/runuser -l myuserid -c "/usr/bin/vncserver -localhost %i"
PIDFile=/home/myuserid/.vnc/%H%i.pid

I then ran 'systemctl daemon-reload' to pick up the file change.

Then I set the vncpassword as myuserid (not root).

I started the server as root using 'systemctl start vncserver-myuserid@:7.service'

I get :
[root@myserver ~]# systemctl start vncserver-myuserid@:7.service
Job for vncserver-myuserid@:7.service failed because a configured resource limit was exceeded. See "systemctl status vncserver-myuserid@:7.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
[root@myserver ~]#

From systemctl status or journalctl -xe, I am getting:
Oct 10 12:40:34 myserver systemd[1]: PID file /home/myuserid/.vnc/myserver:7.pid not readable (yet?) after start.

perms on that file are:
196. Perms on .pid file
[root@myserver ~]# ls -al /home/myuserid/.vnc/
total 24
drwx------ 2 myuserid myuserid 4096 Oct 16 13:28 .
drwx------. 4 myuserid myuserid 4096 Oct 16 13:28 ..
-rw------- 1 myuserid myuserid 697 Oct 16 13:28 myserver:1.log
-rw------- 1 myuserid myuserid 5 Oct 16 13:28 myserver:1.pid
-rw------- 1 myuserid myuserid 8 Oct 10 16:45 passwd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 myuserid myuserid 92 Oct 11 09:20 xstartup
[root@myserver ~]#

ps shows it running against :1 and localhost:7.
[root@myserver ~]# ps -ef | grep vnc
myuserid 2316 1 0 13:28 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/Xvnc :1 -desktop myserver:1 (myuserid) -auth /home/myuserid/.Xauthority -geometry 1024x768 -rfbwait 30000 -rfbauth /home/myuserid/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5901 -fp catalogue:/etc/X11/fontpath.d -pn -localhost :7
root 22327 15512 0 16:15 pts/0 00:00:00 grep --color=auto vnc
[root@myserver ~]#

lsof shows it running on 6007 not 6001.
[root@myserver ~]# lsof -i tcp:6007
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
Xvnc 2316 myuserid 0u IPv6 68775907 0t0 TCP *:6007 (LISTEN)
Xvnc 2316 myuserid 1u IPv4 68775908 0t0 TCP *:6007 (LISTEN)
[root@myserver ~]#
[root@myserver ~]# lsof -i tcp:6001
[root@myserver ~]#

Gnome, KDE, twm listed in /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients are not installed.
[root@myserver ~]# ls -al /usr/bin/twm
ls: cannot access /usr/bin/twm: No such file or directory
[root@myserver ~]#
[root@myserver ~]#
[root@myserver ~]# ls -al /usr/share/xsessions/gnome*
ls: cannot access /usr/share/xsessions/gnome*: No such file or directory
[root@myserver ~]#
[root@myserver ~]#
[root@myserver ~]# echo $STARTKDE

[root@myserver ~]# yum list installed Gnome
Loaded plugins: product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager
Error: No matching Packages to list
[root@myserver ~]#
[root@myserver ~]# yum list installed KDE
Loaded plugins: product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager
Error: No matching Packages to list
[root@myserver ~]#

I've tried using different display ports :1 and :3.
I am ssh'ing using a product called SecureCRT and added a port forward for 5907 on the local machine to the remote machine.
And I'm using UltraVNCViewer as the client on my Windows 7 VM that I'm trying to use to get a GUI display from the server.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, I've been battling with this for a while.

Responses

Maureen, please see if this helps: https://access.redhat.com/discussions/3332331

If not, please come back.

now getting it to display in windows... hmm you probably need something to "bring the display back"

Also see this discussion https://access.redhat.com/discussions/2020503

Let us know how it goes. Someone ought to reply - just post with additional details as you go down this path.

Thanks I've been googling for a few days, so I think I already came across those posts. I figured out the initial problem. I'm starting it with port 7 but it's creating the pid with port 1, which is why it can't find it, so the %i feature in /etc/systemd/system/vncserver-myuserid@.service does not seem to work correctly.

This is the error "Oct 10 12:40:34 myserver systemd[1]: PID file /home/myuserid/.vnc/myserver:7.pid not readable (yet?) after start". And this is the file it's creating: -rw------- 1 myuserid myuserid 5 Oct 16 13:28 myserver:1.pid

So its creating myserver:1.pid instead of myserver:7.pid.

So I ran it this way instead: [root@myserver ~]# systemctl start vncserver-myuserid@:1.service and it seemed to start ok.

Now my problem is somewhere on my laptop as my coworker was able to connect to it from another server and from his laptop, so I'm trying to disable a Symantec client or add firewall rules to allow the traffic. I'm testing just telnet'ing to 127.0.0.1:5901 in my SecureCRT while enabling 'Trace Options' in an ssh session on the server and I'm not getting any trace, so it seems like it's not getting to the server to be rejected, even though the message I get is 'The remote system refused the connection'. Also looking into Redhat firewall logging now to try to confirm.

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