Greetings from the Desert

[desertranger]

Howdy,

My name is Ranger. I'm a disabled Vietnam vet and retired tribal-ranger and adventure guide living somewhere in the Sonora Desert.

This is my service dog Jin, a border collie that's smarter than a 5th grader; better trained too.
He helps me about with medical alerts, assistance and by writing perl and python scripts for me.
Unfortunately he sucks at hardware.



I'm building a media server out of 10.04 LTS per the instructions I found here on the home page. So far I've got everything running properly except...

There's always an except; I'm having problems with the TightVNC GUI. It keeps coming up with a checked grey screen and an X for a cursor instead of my gui. I even installed the synaptic package mgr to see if it would appear on he GUI desktop but nada.

I've tried native (1280x1024) modes and the resolutions of my netbook. 1440x900, 1280x768) as well with no results.
Using Putty along with TightVNC on an Asus Eee netbook 512mb ram and an Intell 900mhz cpu.


[quote=contents of .vnc/xstartup]

#!/bin/sh

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
unset SESSION_MANAGER
# my comment note the '/' on the next line should there be a following space? I've tried both ways.
exec sh / etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
#tried various resolutions here inc 1440x900 and 1280x768
x-terminal-emulator -geometry 1280x1024+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
x-window-manager &[/quote]

Would I be better off installing ocelot and using that or can I sort this problem out.

Together we, Ranger and Jin

[Ian]

Hi Ranger and welcome to the forums.

OK, just to eliminate the obvious first before we move on to the tricky stuff! Each time you run vncserver -geometry 1280x1024 -depth 24 it creates a new "desktop view" onto your server. So, the first time you run it you'll get something like this:

Code: Select all

New 'MediaServer:1 (htkh)' desktop is MediaServer:1

Starting applications specified in /home/htkh/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/htkh/.vnc/MediaServer:1.log

The second time you'll see something like this (Note the :1 above and the :2 below):

Code: Select all

New 'MediaServer:2 (htkh)' desktop is MediaServer:2

Starting applications specified in /home/htkh/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/htkh/.vnc/MediaServer:2.log

and so on.

So, if you want to connect to the first one you'd enter "MediaServer:1" into the desktop VNCViewer dialog box. To connect to the 2nd view you'd enter "MediaServer:2" and so on. Are you sure you're connecting to the view you think you are?

For info the "exec sh /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc" line should not have a space before the / and the etc

Ian.

[Andy Horn]

Hello Ranger.

When I was younger, much younger my parents had a farm and we had Border Collies-well a close relation to Border Collies called Cur's, very smart dog's.

Andy

[desertranger]

@Ian Yes I had that right. Not sure where I went right but I have it working now. Probably in the xstartup file. I killed the old one and started over.

Another question if I may. My disability makes it hard to use the command line. Actually it makes it difficult to type not work a command line. Is there a minimal gnome desktop I can install? I have all the gnome core installed so all I need is the desktop so I can load a browser on it and a couple of other things. I don't need all the crapware that comes with a full Gnome install. Been looking and found it once but lost it.

@Andy Been raising border collies since I left th3e USAF. Herding, SAR, trail work. Friends said I was crazy to try and train one as a service dog. They were right but the end result is fantastic. .

The name is Bond, Jinns Bond. <click it>

[Ian]

Hi there,

If you have the "gnome core" installed, and can connect to it using the TightVNC Viewer from another desktop computer then you already have "a minimal gnome desktop".

When you run the VNCViewer from your desktop computer do you not see the desktop shown in my guide? ie. it should have "Applications" "Places" and "System" menus at the top left of the screen? From those menus you should be able to install as much or as little of the Ubuntu apps and utilities as you like. For example, open office etc.

Have I not understood your issue properly?

Ian.