>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
On 11/24/00, 10:23:46 AM, "Alan Davies"
On Thu 23 Nov, Christopher Dawkins wrote:
When did VNC start operating as an X server? How do you use it to do the equivalent of "xap -display <wsx>:0 &" for an arbitary number of workstations at the same time?
It is a bit tricky but we have it operating that way. I am hoping I will have time to describe how to do so on "http://ict.felsted.org" Any of
our
machines (Arc, NC, Mac or PC) get an X login box when they run VNC, then they login and get the same KDE desktop they get from one of our diskless X terminals.
At the moment its a single LINUX box to lots of (X) PC clients, so it sounds as if VNC is worth I try. I've only used VNC to remotely administer/monitor PC stations/servers.
Having been inspired by the above post, I downloaded VNC 3.3.3R2 which is the first version that supported the inetd option described above. It took me literally two minutes (ignoring typo's) to update /etc/services and /etc/inetd.conf, and -HUP the inetd deamon. Now I have X access from Win95 Pc's giving the XDM logon. It performs as well as my Starnet X-Win32 and if it carries on this well, I'll roll it out fuller. Once change I made to the instructions was to put '-query linux' instead of 'broadcast'.
I'd be interested to know how the loading of multiple VNC sessions on the LINUX box compared to multiple X sessions. I had the feeling that VNC was quite demanding on processor activity to analyse and compress screen data...perhaps I'm wrong. X is no lightweight either generating a fair amount of net traffic (especially with multiple users running asteroids...if they learn how to access our LINUX box we let them play games for while.)
Just picked up issue 3 of LINUX magazine. Excellent. Lots of reading and useful things to try. I hope the advertising doesn't increase at the expense of article space in the future.
-- Alan Davies Head of Computing Birkenhead School