Solaris Xen Drop 66 – Enable VNC in Fedora HVM DomU

Since the Fedora HVM DomU (on Solaris Dom0) boots to the text mode shell, I am looking for the graphic interface through the VNC remote login. The following instructions lead you to the magic graphic remote login. The commands are issued in the Fedora guest unless specifying.

1. Use vncpasswd command to set a vnc server password. The vnc server doesn't work without this password.

2. Edit the VNC server configuration file, /etc/sysconfig/vncservers. Here is the sample:

 

# The VNCSERVERS variable is a list of display:user pairs.

#

# Uncomment the line below to start a VNC server on display :1

# as my 'myusername' (adjust this to your own).  You will also

# need to set a VNC password; run 'man vncpasswd' to see how

# to do that.

#

# DO NOT RUN THIS SERVICE if your local area network is

# untrusted!  For a secure way of using VNC, see

# <URL:http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/sshvnc.html>.

 

VNCSERVERS="1:fred 2:joe"

 

# fred's VNC options

VNCSERVERARGS[1]="-geometry 1024x768"

 

# joe's VNC options

VNCSERVERARGS[2]="-geometry 1280x1024"

 

3. To start the vncserver at boot time:

# chkconfig vncserver on

 

4. Change the windowing manager from the simple twm to the normal desktop:

# vi ~/.vnc/xstartup

Uncomment the two lines following

 

"Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop"

 

5. Start vncserver immediatly

# service vncserver start

 

6. Connect to the vncserver with vncviewer:

On Windows system:

Download and install the tightvnc windows client software from http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html#stable. After start the vncviewer, input the IP:Display (eg. 10.239.56.94:1) and the vnc password to the promted dialog. The remote desktop will display on the screen.

On Solaris system:

# java -jar /usr/share/gnome/vino/vino-client.jar VNC_address

where VNC_address means the IP:Display, eg. 10.239.56.94:1. After input the password and leave the user name blank, the remote desktop display.