Arch Linux

mvymazal

Member

Registered: 2015-08-08

Posts: 30

[SOLVED] TigerVNC: service inactive(dead)

I updated TigerVNC to the newest version (1.11.0-5) and can no longer start the service correctly. Following the wiki, I made the following changes:

/etc/pam.d/tigervnc

looks as follows:

#%PAM-1.0
session    required     pam_loginuid.so
session    required     pam_namespace.so
session    optional     pam_keyinit.so force revoke
session    required     pam_limits.so
-session   optional     pam_systemd.so
session    required     pam_unix.so
-session   optional     pam_reauthorize.so prepare

I ran

vncpasswd

to create a new password and edited

/etc/tigervnc/vncserver.users

to allow my user:

# /etc/tigervnc/vncserver.users
:1=MY_USERNAME

Finally, my

$HOME/.vnc/config

is

securitytypes=vncauth,tlsvnc
session=lxqt
geometry=1792x1008
#localhost
alwaysshared

I'm not sure if 'securitytypes' and 'localhost' should be enabled or not, but I can't run vnc service regardless of whether these options are on or off. I also disabled all custom vnc services and removed corresponding config files from

/etc/systemd/system

and restarted my machine. Now when I run

systemctl start vncserver@:1

and check status, I'm getting the following:

● vncserver@:1.service - Remote desktop service (VNC)
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead) since Fri 2020-10-30 11:46:56 GMT; 15min ago
    Process: 1298 ExecStart=/usr/bin/vncsession-start :1 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 1304 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Oct 30 11:46:54 ****** systemd[1]: Starting Remote desktop service (VNC)...
Oct 30 11:46:54 ****** systemd[1]: Started Remote desktop service (VNC).
Oct 30 11:46:56 ****** systemd[1]: vncserver@:1.service: Succeeded.

I can't connect and 'ps' does not report any vnc process running. I tried to run

sudo strace -ff /usr/bin/vncsession server :1 &> trace.log

and the only suspicious lines in the log file are

connect(3, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, sun_path="/var/run/nscd/socket"}, 110) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

and at the very end:

write(2, "User \"server\" does not exist\n", 29User "server" does not exist
) = 29
exit_group(71)                          = ?
+++ exited with 71 +++

I don't have any user "server", but I don't see why would I need one.

What else can I do to debug this?

Last edited by mvymazal (2020-11-01 23:14:17)

twelveeighty

Member

From: Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 1,225

Re: [SOLVED] TigerVNC: service inactive(dead)

The "server" user error is because that's what you told vncsession to do:

sudo strace -ff /usr/bin/vncsession server :1 &> trace.log

SYNOPSIS
       vncsession <username> <:display#>

mvymazal

Member

Registered: 2015-08-08

Posts: 30

Re: [SOLVED] TigerVNC: service inactive(dead)

I ran the strace command again, this time with correct user name. The log file has over 7000 lines now and grepping for errors mentioned ~/.xsession-errors, which in turn said that ~/.xinitrc could not be run. Making ~/.xinitrc executable allowed me to start tigervnc server correctly. Thank you @twelveeighty for pointing out the issue with my strace command.