Walk thru for setting up X-server or VNC on solaris 9

Question

I have a solaris 9 box which i am trying to setup x-server or better still VNC server on, I am having no joy at all and all the doco that i seem to read on it is very cryptic or it more for a redhat distro. Are there any walk throughs for this online? or is anyone willing to step me through it themselves??? any help would be great

Answer 1

I used it a lot on Solaris. Give some examples of the problems you are having. What is showing up in your log file in the .vnc subdirectory. Is anything showing up in ~/.xsession-errors ? I don't believe there should be anything showing up in this log.
It may be something as simple as you haven't specified a windowmanager correctly.
This is what I do. I use fluxbox on all my servers - it, well, rocks :)
In my .profile, I have the following enviornment variable defined:
DEFAULT_WM=fluxbox
export DEFAULT_WM
I sometimes play with other window managers and this allows me to change window managers at login.
In my .xinitrc, I have the following:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
!/bin/sh
# $XConsortium: xinitrc.cpp,v 1.4 91/08/22 11:41:34 rws Exp $
userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap
# merge in defaults and keymaps
if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi
if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi
if [ -f $userresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $userresources
fi
if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
xmodmap $usermodmap
fi
# start some nice programs
echo "Default WM = $DEFAULT_WM"
case ${DEFAULT_WM} in
# TWM
[Tt][Ww][Mm])
/usr/X11R6/bin/twm &
xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 &
xterm -geometry 80x40+223-97 &
xterm -geometry 80x40-42-0 &
exec xterm -geometry 80x40+0+0 -name last-process
# ICEWM
[Ii][Cc][Ee][Ww][Mm])
/usr/X11R6/bin/icewm &
xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 &
xterm -geometry 80x40+223-97 &
xterm -geometry 80x40-42-0 &
exec xterm -geometry 80x40+0+0 -name last-process
# KDE
[Kk][Dd][Ee])
exec /usr/local/bin/startkde
# Gnome
[Gg][Nn][Oo][Mm][Ee])
exec gnome-session
# Enlightenment
[Ee][Nn][Ll][Ii][Gg][Hh][Tt][Ee][Nn][Mm][Ee][Nn][Tt])
exec enlightenment
# Fluxbox
[Ff][Ll][Uu][Xx][Bb][Oo][Xx])
/usr/local/bin/fluxbox &
#wmnd &
xterm -geometry 80x24+0+16 -e /bin/ksh &
exec xterm -geometry 80x24-14+16 -e /bin/ksh
echo
echo "Put the crack pipe down and step away from the computer ..."
echo "You either ran startx without an argument or the window"
echo "manager you want to run is not configured in your .xinitrc."
echo "Check windows managers available and update your .xinitrc"
echo "accordingly."
exit 1
esac
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
In my .vnc subdirectory, I move the default xstartup to something like xstartup-ORIG and then create a symbolic link to ~/.xinitrc.
Assuming I have fluxbox (or whatever WM I plan to use) installed and setup correctly, running 'vncserver -depth 24"' works graphs.
I obviously run vncpasswd prior to running vncserver to setup the vncpasswd - but I think this is unnecessary these days as I think vncserver takes care of checking for that now. Old habits die hard.
HTH