AD wrote regarding '[SLE] How share 1 LAN client's desktop/terminal (NOT control) with many clients' on Fri, Sep 10 at 02:26:

Hello from sunny SaiGon,

For training purposes, I want to share one LAN client/server's desktop or terminal with many (actually 9) clients on a classrom LAN running SuSE 9.1, but WITHOUT giving the other clients any control of the desktop or terminal being shared, except as explicitly permitted.

The ultimate objective is to be able to provide demonstrates of Linux usage and administration to a classroom of students while keeping each student at his or her machine.

I've tried using vnc and kibitz already. kibitz is great for sharing terminal/ console sessions with many clients, each in a separate konsole session.

I've been able to sequentially share a desktops with several clients using vnc by successively sharing desktops in a chain-like process: client/server shares with client 1, client 1 shares with 2, 2 with 3, etc., and all can watch what is being done on the client/server -- though with successively smaller desktops (as vnc seems to require its own top window bar for each shared session).

But the catch is that with both vnc and kibitz, there does not seem to be a way to stop clients from being able to control the sessions at the same time the instructor is providing a demonstration.

The best scenario would be if the instructor could selectively turn the mouse and keyboard input off on each client while s/he performs a demonstration and then return keyboard control to the clients when finished. Even better would be to enable the instructor to watch what each client-user is doing in different desktop/terminal windows on the instructor's machine after s/he returns control of their machines to them.

Can this be done? If so, can anyone provide information or references to how it can be quickly configured?

Xvnc can do that. You just force the connections to "always shared" and disable the remote keyboard + mouse. Xvnc --help gives a list of options, you want "-alwaysshared" and "-viewonly" to give you a display that no one can edit. Take the -viewonly off of the server screen and put it after each client conenction (assuming you can control the clients, too) so they conenct without kbd/mouse control, but you can still conenct to the shared session as usual. "man vncviewer" and "Xvnc --help" would be handy reading... :) --Danny