On Tue, 9 Feb 2021 10:30:37 +0100
Roger Oberholtzer
I want to have remote desktops in to openSUSE systems. I currently use x11vnc to do this from other Linux computers. Connecting to an existing session as well as letting the session be shared are needed. x11vnc does this fine. We use the default display :0 for this.
Recently (after leap 42.3 some time), it seems that x11vnc or X requires that one provide an authorization file to access the desktop. It is specified to x11vnc via the -auth option.
This would generally not be a problem. Except finding the file to use is a bit of a hack. Where the files is located depends on, it seems, which display manager one is using. When using kdm, for example, the file(s) are in /var/lib/kdm/AuthFiles/. Other dms put them elsewhere.
Which brings me to my real question. I start x11vnc via xinetd. In that context, I would like how to know what authorization file to use for display 0. That is the one we usually connect to and share. Initially, I had just edited the xinetd file with the name of the new authorization file, which is made each time the display manager starts. This was not nice. So I thought I might just use a wild card to get the name of the file in /var/lib/kdm/AuthFiles/ as there was only one. We only use display :0. Today, on a couple systems, I suddenly find more than one authorization file. I have no idea why. So the wild card thing will not be a real solution.
How are others solving this? To be honest, I don't really want the auth thing. I would be quite happy to just disable it all together. But if that is not possible, how best to find out in an automated way (i.e., in a shell script) which auth file to specify to x11vnc?
I am quite flexible in solutions. I'm not married to x11vnc.It just has been working fine.
Don't use any of this technology but https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/x11vnc hints that maybe -auth guess might be relevant and man x11vnc provides more details to try.