Quick and Easy VNC Server setup

VNC, or Virtual Networked Computing, is a way of controlling a remote computer just as though you are sitting in front of it. In the Windows world it is also known as remote desktop but it's normally referred to as VNC in the Linux world. All that happens is that you connect using a VNC client to a remote computer running the VNC server, then an image of the remote desktop is transmitted to your local computer and you can see and control the desktop just as though you are there since all keyboard and mouse commands are sent from your client machine to the server.

Step:1: Installation
First check if you already have them installed on your system, open a terminal and type:
 $ rpm -qa | grep vnc 
           vnc-server-4.1.2-9.el5
If you get an output something like this then you're all ready, if not you need to install them via yum.

Step 2 : Start the VNC server.
$ vncserver
 ......

New 'server:1 (user)' desktop is server:1

This will ask for password, you need to remember this password and need to provide it at the time of connecting to the server through VNC client.

Step 3 : Connecting from VNC client
From client run vncviewer   (dont run remote desktop connection from winxp or win2003 .they are using different protocol.)

In server enter : server:1

enter password: **********

And you will see the screen with one terminal open because by default vnc starts twm desktop.

For getting your gnome desktop

Go to folder /user/.vnc/ (user home directory) and open file xstartup using vi editor and uncomment or add the following lines

unset SESSION_MANAGER

exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

Restart the vncserver and connect to it using vncviewer, you should now see your default desktop, something like ..