Getting Xvnc to work with xinetd

[Michael Herman]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 11:54:53PM -0600, Christopher Hogan wrote:
>I need help getting vnc to work with xinetd. I've followed the
>instructions at: http://faq.gotomyvnc.com/fom-serve/cache/65.html
>
>However, when I connect via vncviewer, all I get is a grey screen with
>an X pointer. How do I get a login screen? I've tried subsituting Xvnc
>with vncserver in xinetd. However, I then get an "invalid vnc server"
>error, even after assigning a user with the appropriate ~/.vnc folder.
>
>I'm using vnc version 3.3.7 and SuSE 8.2. Reading the FAQ at RealVNC, I
>see it's normal to get this grey screen using Xvnc. However, everything
>I've found (including the default settings for xinetd under SuSE) say I
>should get a log-in screen. Help?
>

I had this problem as well.  I got it to work by changing the -query
to broadcast within /etc/xinetd.d/vnc.  The entry for server_args in
/etc/xinetd.d/vnc looks like this:

server_args = :42 -inetd -once -broadcast -geometry 1024x768 -depth 16

Ultimately, what I did was follow the directions in
/usr/share/doc/release-notes for setting up VNC and then modified the
server_args to use broadcast.

I am behind a firewall and use ssh to connect to my machine.  I use
ssh to port-forward the VNC port for security.

HTH.

--
Mike