VNC on NT - Suppressing Wallpaper graphics

[Steve Manning]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 16:25:22 -0000, you wrote:
>> Actually he has received several responses and I am working on a patch
>that
>> will disable the wallpaper on connect.
>
>    I may have missed something in this thread, but I think you have a
>problem with this project. As the VNC server generally runs as a service=
 on
>NT you can connect to the remote system when nobody is logged it. In =
this
>case your code will not be able to disable the wallpaper because there =
will
>not be wallpaper. When the remote user logs in the wallpaper will appear=
 and
>you  will get the initial huge transmission that you are trying to =
avoid. I
>can't think of a way round this, I'm afraid.

Not only that, but I can think of several other potential issues with
this whole thread.

What happens when the shadowed PC crashes in the middle of a VNC
session?  Or if VNC itself crashes?  Or if the client disconnects
un-gracefully?  How does the wallpaper value get restored to the right
setting?  If there are multiple users on the server system, the user
whose settings were changed by VNC might not log on again for days -
how will you cache that wallpaper setting until the next time they log
in?

What will happen when you connect to a machine with no user logged in,
and you sign in as a user with wallpaper?  How about if you are signed
in as a user when you first connect, but then sign out as that user as
part of your VNC session?  What if you sign in and out multiple times
in one VNC session to different users all with different wallpaper
settings?

As a systems admin, I picture fielding repeated calls of "My wallpaper
keeps changing for no reason!" from aggravated users.

Personally I have concerns with the viability of this whole thread,
and I'm not sure I would "vote" to have this feature included in the
core app.  Its just too... intrusive... for my tastes.

I think a more acceptable approach is the zlib compression angle.
That way complicated wallpapers don't bog the display updates down *as
much*.

I can see that there could be circumstances where this type of
functionality would work well though, and it *is* an interesting
discussion nonetheless. :-)

Just my US$0.02.


Steve Manning
Systems Administrator
Mega Marts Inc.
Milwaukee, WI  USA
manning "at" execpc.com

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