Black screen when trying to run (Tiger)VNC with Gnome under Fedora 30

0

I have seen variants of this issue logged all over the place, but none of the reported solutions seem to work for me. I am running Fedora 30 as a client under VMWware ESXi and want to access the client using VNC, with Gnome being my preferred desktop. I am using TigerVNC on both ends.

I have installed TigerVNC-server on my client and opened the firewall. I have started the server using:

vncserver :1

And my ~/.vnc/xstartup file is as shown below: 

#!/bin/sh

export XKL_XMODMAP_DISABLE=1
unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &

gnome-panel &
gnome-settings-daemon &
metacity &
nautilus &
gnome-terminal &

# extra stuff
export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="GNOME-Flashback:GNOME"
export XDG_MENU_PREFIX="gnome-flashback-"

My Gnome is V3.32.2. Note that the above is but one of several variants that I have found and tried - all with equal lack of success :-(

Does anybody have a working solution?

Andy

Posted 2019-09-09T18:02:06.190

Reputation: 101

OK, I managed to make some major progress by installing the MATE desktop and following the instructions here: https://www.server-world.info/en/note?os=Fedora_28&p=desktop&f=6. I had previously followed the similar instructions for GNOME but with no success. Looks like gnome 3.x might be the issue. I'm still getting lots of errors in the log file, but I can probably address those incrementally. But at least I can now see the desktop :-)

– Andy – 2019-09-10T10:10:18.023

Do not start apps manually and let gnome-session do its work! Put gnome-session --session=gnome-flashback-metacity --disable-acceleration-check & after exporting env and remove lines from gnome-panel to gnome-terminal. – muktupavels – 2019-09-10T21:19:29.880

OK, I've done that, but now all I get is a grey screen with a series of check boxes, such as "Accept clipboard from viewers", "Also set primary selection" and a couple more. Wish I knew how to include images here :-( – Andy – 2019-09-12T08:35:54.570

Answers

0

I finally got it working by changing the --session type to gnome-classic. So my working startup file is now as shown below:

#!/bin/sh

export XKL_XMODMAP_DISABLE=1
unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources

xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &

export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="GNOME-Flashback:GNOME"
export XDG_MENU_PREFIX="gnome-flashback-"

gnome-session --session=gnome-classic --disable-acceleration-check &

Once I made this change it became clear that the checkboxes that I had seen previously were actually the dialog for the VNCConfig application.

Andy

Posted 2019-09-09T18:02:06.190

Reputation: 101

For GNOME Classic environment variables are incorrect. XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP should be just GNOME and XDG_MENU_PREFIX should be gnome-. – muktupavels – 2019-09-13T10:54:10.593

Asked: 2019-09-09T18:02:06.190

Viewed: 1 022 times

Active: 2019-09-12T09:01:53.993