X11VNC fighting me tooth and nail. Would really appreciate some help.

GoogleGroups
1

Greetings,

I am trying to install X11VNC and log into it via my laptop and I am having some tough luck

Here is what I have done…

I have changed my IP address to a 192.168.1.XX
My router for some reason still thinks it is the old IP address even when I refresh it.

I have turned on VNC on the firewall on my 2wire router

Next I installed VNC:

  • Debian: sudo apt-get install x11vnc
  1. Enter the below command

-Debian:

x11vnc -bg -o %HOME/.x11vnc.log.%VNCDISPLAY -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -forever

(I’m not sure if I turned it on)

I can ping the beaglebone from my computer

C:\Users\William>ping 192.168.1.XX

Pinging 192.168.1.XX with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.1.XX: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.1.XX: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.1.XX: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=64

Reply from 192.168.1.XX: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.1.XX:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 3ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 3ms

So I can See it.

I start tightVNC on my laptop

192.168.1.XX:5901

I get connection has been gracefully closed. Or Connection was actively Refused…

X11VNC has a few configurations when opened on the desktop I am unfamiliar with. No passwords in use as of yet (I was warned when I started)

Does anyone see anything out of whack?

Thanks!

Bill

2

You could try port 5900 instead of 5901 and look into the x11vnc logfile
to confirm that your vnc client is connecting.

Nuno

3

How do I get into the logfile? I did not know about that
Thanks

4

$ dmesg | tail

5

Still not working… It’s been a week. This is frustrating

Here is where I am at:

on the Desktop I click to run X11VNC Allow the default port 5900 to stay I do not click “Enable SSL” because I do not want encryption. I click “OK” and the next screen shows up in the GUI configuation.
I click X Show instructions and X Accept Connections

The dialog box shows "X11VNC has failed to start … Maybe there is another VNC server listening on port 5900… (There isn’t)

I then looked into the $dmesg | tail

Here is the last thing it spits out
libphy 4a10100.mdio.00 Link is - 100/FULL
Ipv6 ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth 0 Link becomes ready.

I have looked at the router. I initially changed the IP address to XXX.XXX.1.100 but the router config still claimed it was XXX.XXX.1.70 I have no idea why that was

I then changed the Static IP to XXX.XXX.1.70 and enable VNC connections STILL NO LUCK.

What the heck is going on Anything else ask I’ll give just help me get this working

Thanks

Bill

6

Run x11vnc on thet beaglebone without the '-bg' argument. You probably
also need to run it as sudo, if you are using the '-auth' argument.

I'm confused about your more recent email. You have to run x11vnc on the
beaglebone, not on your laptop. On the laptop (client), you need to run
a vnc client, e.g., vinagre.

Can you explain what you are trying to do ?

regards,
Nuno

7

I am trying (Big picture here) to run Machinekit on the beaglebone for my CNC router. I am trying to use VNC to be able to run the machine with the computer out of the room to prevent everything from getting dusty. I have x11vnc installed on the bone but cannot connect to it over the ethernet. I have been chipping away all week and started over, this time without a static IP address and finally got ssh over ethernet to work. I am using tightvnc on my laptop to try and communicate with it.

Thanks

Bill

8

Small picture, I’ve run x11VNC on my BBB briefly, but I find ssh -X actually works better, I picked this tip up from one of the Machinekit youTube videos.

I might change my tune if my host had to be Windows, I’m currently helping a friend get going so I’m in the process of installing cygwin on my only Windows machine to find out.

Here are my notes from when I set up x11VNC on one of the Machinekit images:

-----------------------------------------------------VNC Set Up-----------------------------------------------------------------

// Set up running machinekit using VNC
// probably best to do this to use the USB Ethernet gadget as WiFi and wired Ethernet will be slower than the maximum USB2 speed.
// Download a VNC viewer, this one is popular on Windows:
http://www.uvnc.com/docs/uvnc-viewer.html
// lots of info about running it:
http://www.uvnc.com/docs/uvnc-viewer.html

// login to the BBB ssh 192.168.7.2 using putty, and do all this as normal user (default: machinekit)
// install X11 VNC server:
sudo apt-get install x11vnc

// start the server:
x11vnc -bg -o %HOME/.x11vnc.log.%VNCDISPLAY -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -forever
// note the assigned port, usually 5900

//Start your VNC viewer and connect by putting 192.168.7.2:5900 (or whatever port the server started on)
// The AUTO mode is the best starting point.
// I did it on Linux using a different viewer client and performance seemed better than with the local HDMI display and keyboard/mouse.
// This is probably the way to go forward. (I used Gnome Remote Desktop Viewer)

// to start the server automatically after bootup:
// create a shell script to start the server, Don’t do this as root! use the normal user login (default: machinekit)
nano startVNCserver.sh
// paste in these lines:
#!/bin/bash
/bin/sleep 30
/usr/bin/x11vnc -bg -o %HOME/.x11vnc.log.%VNCDISPLAY -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -forever

// exit nano and make the script executable with:
chmod a+x startVNCserver.sh

// start the server on bootup
crontab -e
// and add the following at the end of the file:
@reboot /home/machinekit/startVNCserver.sh
// exit nano and save the normal way

This was with a Machinekit image form something like 2015-04 so I apologize in advance if things have changed that make this totally wrong.
I’m not sure how robust my script to start it from a crontab is, the sleep 30 is adhoc, as the @reboot seems to run before all the needed system pieces have finished their startup, but it seemed to work for me before I decided ssh -X was a better way to go.

9

Small picture, I’ve run x11VNC on my BBB briefly, but I find ssh -X actually works better, I picked this tip up from one of the Machinekit youTube videos.

I might change my tune if my host had to be Windows, I’m currently helping a friend get going so I’m in the process of installing cygwin on my only Windows machine to find out.

Here are my notes from when I set up x11VNC on one of the Machinekit images:

I only run headless cmdline only on all our BBB’s here - 5 total, 2x A5A, 3x RevC, but am curious as to why you would not just install a Linux virtual machine on Windows, and then ssh -X from there. Whats more, there are tools for Windows to “remote X” into Linux as well.

Anyway, why exactly do you need to run cygwin on your Windows machine ? I’m just curious, and perhaps I can even help you to find an alternative way of achieving the same thing. My main system here is Windows, and have never had the need for cygwin ever( and I do a lot of development for the beaglebone ). For code, I write code in Windows, using , and compile natively on the target. Be it for the BBB, or a test i386 Linux install.

10

If you are in Australia, the January 2016 issue of Silicon Chip (a local electronics magazine) has an excellent full description of how to do this on a RaspberryPi. It should be exactly the same on a BB.

Bill