Remote GUI Instance + Debian 9
For years I've used KDE on on my computers. I used to just have one
desktop about 10 years ago but have since added many other laptops to my
collection (all running debian of course). My now 10 year old desktop
sits in the corner all by it self and rarely gets turned on. But my wife
still uses it sometimes, and I've added many VMs for testing under my
user account. So normally if I want to test some software under windows
or something, I'd just make a wake-on-lan call to my desktop, wait a
minute and then point Xephyr to its IP, and presto I'm then sitting at a
KDM login prompt. I've done this for probably 5+ years.
And then I upgraded to Stretch... I read the release notes and not much
was said about any changes that I thought would effect me.
But apparently remote graphical logins are now a thing of the past...
But I hope not.
After booting into my new Stretch upgrade, I noticed that it looked
different from the live cd that I first tested with. I tracked that down
to KDM not being part of KDE anymore and the live cd used sddm. So I
installed sddm (all this was over console) and then tried to Xephyr over
to the box. But I got nothing. A little research later and apparently
XDMCP isn't even part of sddm. So I reached for lightdm. Tried xephry
again, got a loading scree, and got my hopes up. But then I was met with
a "plasma failed to start opengl 2" message and a blank desktop. A bunch
of research later and apparently plasma5 now only runs if you have
actual opengl capabilities (which running over xephry or any remote
desktop apparently kills).
I just about gave up, but hey this is linux, I should be able to do what
ever I want right? Why can't I just start a second X instance in the
background and plug x11vnc into that? Well that didn't work either due
to some permission issues:
>startx -- :2 vt5
>(EE) xf86OpenConsole: Cannot open virtual console 5 (Permission denied)
So more research later, and I install "xserver-xorg-legacy" and drop:
>allowed_users=anybody
>needs_root_rights=yes
into /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config and I re-run startx -- :2 vt5 in one
console and "x11vnc -display :2 -noxrecord" in another console and now I
can vnc from my laptop and see the desktop.
Everything is working! Whew!
But what the heck? KDM with XDMCP was a feature. And it just worked.
Maybe I missed something, but am I seriously reduced to using this
complete "run X as setuid root so I can run startx as a normal user so I
can run x11vnc to use my desktop" hack??
Or is there a better way?
Thanks,
Sam
Reply to: