new question

[Dr. Joel M. Hoffman]

>If an Xvnc crashes, or a machine is rebooted, then it leaves behind the unix
>domain socket /tmp/.X11-unix/Xn.  When you start a VNC desktop with vncserver,
>it checks the TCP ports and finds the lowest display number n which is
>available.  However, if a previous Xvnc run by a different user has left
>behind /tmp/.X11-unix/Xn then the new one fails because it can't remove this
>file.  Possible workarounds:
>[...]
> 3. Fix the vncserver script so that as well as checking TCP port
>    availability, it also checks that there isn't a /tmp/.X11-unix/Xn when
>    finding the lowest display number.  This is the best fix, but each time
>    an Xvnc crashes (or the machine is rebooted without killing Xvnc first),
>    its display number will be unavailable until someone with
>    appropriate permissions removes /tmp/.X11-unix/Xn.  The reboot case

A daemon could check for unused sockets and delete them.  But this is
really more of an X question than vnc.

-Joel
(joel "at" exc.com)