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Chade

Member

Registered: 2009-08-18

Posts: 14

VNC Multiple Gnome Sessions Metacity/Theme Issues

A while ago I set up a new PC as a desktop for my father and a file server for the rest of the house. It's been running gnome fine for my father and samba for everyone else without issues. I recently started experimenting with VNC in the hopes of accessing my own gnome desktop remotely.

I set up a new user account for myself, ssh'ed in, and in my ~/.vnc/xstartup I wrote:

export XKL_MODMAP_DISABLE=1
unset SESSION_MANAGER
exec ck-launch-session gnome-session&

From there, I just run

vncserver :1

Using UltraVNC Viewer on my windows 7 desktop, I could access this newly created gnome session, however something is awry. Gnome refuses to take on any theme apart from the default and opening the appearance manager kills metacity.

Perhaps this has something to do with trying to run two gnome sessions at once? Is there any way to get around this, or will I have to run something like openbox for my own session?

Thanks in advance for any assistance given.

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アチャ リニカス

Chade

Member

Registered: 2009-08-18

Posts: 14

Re: VNC Multiple Gnome Sessions Metacity/Theme Issues

Some slight progress. I modified my ~/.vnc/xstartup file to contain:

export XKL_MODMAP_DISABLE=1
unset SESSION_MANAGER
exec ck-launch-session gnome-session
metacity&

Which solves the problem of metacity crashing, but certain elements of the theme still seem a bit... "off". I can't enable compositing under metacity for some reason still, and whenever I try and open any applications through the terminal, I get the error message:

"Xlib: extension "RANDR" missing on display " :1.0".

Does anyone know of a way around this?

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Leviathan1

Member

Registered: 2010-11-24

Posts: 19

Re: VNC Multiple Gnome Sessions Metacity/Theme Issues

The X server that comes with tightvnc doesn't have the same functionality as the stock Xorg server. Most notably, the xrandr extension is not supported,

Try with Tigervnc from the AUR instead. Works well for me.

Alternatively, you could also use X11vnc, which takes a different approach in that it doesn't start it's own X server but acts as a proxy to an already running X server.

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,605

Website

Re: VNC Multiple Gnome Sessions Metacity/Theme Issues

+1 for tigvervnc

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