Question

I am working remotely and had to restart. I can start a vnc session and log into that. But for some reason the program I’m trying to use gives a GLX error when I try to start it. (I’m using xfce4).

I’ve circumvented this problem in the past by using an x11vnc session into my display :0. To do this, I open a regular vnc session, and type in a terminal

x11vnc --display :0 --forever

Then I close the vnc session, and log into the x11vnc session.

But this isn’t working now because, since I had to restart, I think I don’t really have a display :0 running because I have not logged into a desktop session on site.

The question is: is there any way I effectively log into a desktop session remotely, so it would be as if I had logged into my computer on site, and can then use x11vnc as I described above.

(Caveat: I’m not an expert in all these things, so I may have used some incorrect terminology. But I think the question is clear).

Thanks!

============== added ================

Maybe a clarification would be the following. Can I trick the computer into thinking that I am sitting right in front of it? Can I start a session remotely such that when I next sit down in front of the computer it will appear that I have already logged in? I’m certain this would solve my problem. No other combination of VNCing seems to work.

============== More ======================

I just restarted (remotely), ssh’d in, and typed

x11vnc --display :0

This is what I got

** If NO ONE is logged into an X session yet, but there is a greeter login
   program like "gdm", "kdm", "xdm", or "dtlogin" running, you will need
   to find and use the raw display manager MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE file.
   Some examples for various display managers:

     gdm:     -auth /var/gdm/:0.Xauth
              -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth
     kdm:     -auth /var/lib/kdm/A:0-crWk72
              -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-crWk72
     xdm:     -auth /var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-XQvaJk
     dtlogin: -auth /var/dt/A:0-UgaaXa

but none of those options worked. I also tried the other suggestions, such as using -auth guess.

Answer 1

Display :0 is always running, assuming you have an X session running and your computer has booted up. The command x11vnc --display :0 --forever opens a VNC listening port on your machine that you can connect to with a VNC client.

Your initial vnc connection where you run the x11vnc command is not really necessary if you use SSH (a remote shell). If you install SSHD, and connect via ssh username@hostname you can run the command x11vnc --display :0 --forever from there, eliminating the need for the initial VNC connection.

If you don’t have sshd running, you may be out of luck unless some sort of screen sharing is running. To see if there’s any way to remote into your computer, run a port scan with NMAP.