[Discuss] FreeNx

[John Blomfield]

pw wrote:
> John Blomfield wrote:
>
>> Thanks, I am beginning to get my mind around all of this.  I have set 
>> about trying out all the options but I have been unable to get freeNx 
>> and 2X servers to work.  Probably a combination of bugs in the distro 
>> implementations and my incompetence. However, I have got plain old 
>> vnc working perfectly. I found it relatively simple compared to the 
>> others and a wealth of "how to's" around to help.  As yet I have not 
>> been brave enough to try your X server solution.  I realise that vnc 
>> is not secure but that hardly matters in my limited home environment 
>> and I have an external firewall router.
>>
>> John Blomfield
>
>
> VNC is causing your resolution problems because it doesn't use
> a local config for screen resolution. You actually need to start
> the vnc server with a
>
> vncserver -geometry 1024x768 -depth 24 :1
>
> or what ever you want the resolution to be on the client side.
>
> man vncserver for more options.
>
I actually didn't say I had resolution problems what made you think 
that?  In fact I don't think that the "geometry" setting changes the 
"resolution" since this is defined by the display settings on your 
server computer.  My observation is that the servers desktop background 
is merely "scaled" to fit the vncserver specified geometry and this 
geometry defines the maximum window size shown on the client.  The 
"resolution" seems to stay constant so that icons and text etc in the 
vncviewer window are the same as on the server machine i.e the number of 
pixels per item are unchanged.
> VNC is *not* X windows, it's a virtual desktop client that uses
> a session defined for the server and simply passes 'screenshots'
> of that GUI session to the client.
>
> If you don't wish to mess with the setting up the vnc server resolution
> for each client you'd best get Alan to run you through the whole X thin
> client thing. He does that stuff in his sleep.
>
> The other problem with vnc is that you can only have separate
> user accounts if everyone logs into the server as their own user id,
> runs their own instance of vncserver with a unique display number.
> This again requires the resolution and bit depth of the display to be
> defined server side when vncserver is run up. No local settings will 
> ever be used.
>
> The big danger with vnc is that one person, logged in as root, sets up a
> single session *as root user* and then everyone else is using that
> session *as root user*. Bye bye security...bye bye...
>
> If you use an X windows client, instead of vnc, everyone can just set 
> up their sessions as they like *from within X windows* without having to
> log in using a shell to set it up. Then their session settings will be
> associated with their user id. You also won't have unused vncserver
> instances running on your server when nobody is using them. Also all
> the people who are logging in are limited, by security, to the 
> resources applicable to their unix user.
>
As per my emails to Alan none of this really applies to me since the 
only person on the network is me! There is only one user account on my 
computers apart from root of course, so nobody can log on as another 
user and create another instance of vncserver.  As you probable know if 
you are logged on to the server on one client and another client logs on 
as the same user that client "grabs" the display.
John
>
> Peter
>
>
>
>
> Peter
>