[ubuntu-uk] VNC colours and fonts

[Tony Travis]

I've had problems with VNC under Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS when some X11 clients 
report colours are not defined, or when fonts are not displayed at all!

I'm using TightVNC client and server, and all the applications work fine 
under X11. The colour problem has been discussed quite a lot around the 
Internet. I've been searching for a solution for a while, but most 
explanations that I've read are all about where the "rgb.txt" file is 
located. None of these worked for me, so I used "strace" to see where my 
X11 applications are going wrong. In fact, Xvnc tried to open:

	/usr/lib/X11/Xcms.txt

I found a useful reference about X11 colour maps here:

	http://www.klauser.ch/lxug

I couldn't find a complete "Xcms.txt" file to download, so I wrote a 
Perl script to create one from "rgb.txt":

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# @(#)rgb2cms.pl  2007-04-24  A.J.Travis

#
# Convert rgb.txt to Xcms.txt
#

print "XCMS_COLORDB_START 0.1\n";
<>;
while (<>) {
     chomp;
     ( $r, $g, $b, $name ) = /(\d+)\W+(\d+)\W+(\d+)\W+(.*$)/;
     printf("%s\trgb:%02x/%02x/%02x\n", $name, $r, $g, $b);
}
print "XCMS_COLORDB_END\n";

I used this to create the "Xcms.txt" file:

	cd /usr/lib/X11
	sudo rgb2cms.pl rgb.txt .Xcms.txt

I also installed the X11 font server:

	aptitude install xfs

I'm running VNC from inetd:

	aptitude install netkit-inetd

Add this to /etc/services:

# Local services
vnc-0           5900/tcp         # Tight-VNC server 950x700
vnc-1           5901/tcp         # Tight-VNC server 1024x768

And add this to /etc/inetd.conf:

# VNC server
vnc-0                   stream  tcp     nowait  nobody 
/usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/bin/Xvnc :0 -inetd -query localhost -geometry 
950x700 -depth 24 -once -fp unix/:7100
vnc-1                   stream  tcp     nowait  nobody 
/usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/bin/Xvnc :1 -inetd -query localhost -geometry 
1024x768 -depth 24 -once -fp unix/:7100

I now have all the colours and fonts working correctly using VNC to 
connect to Ubuntu, either from the Java applet or vncviewer running 
under Linux or Windows. I think these problems have been fixed in later 
releases of Ubuntu, but I'm continuing to use 6.06.1 LTS for my work.

I'd be interested to heard from other people using VNC under Ubuntu.

Best wishes,

	Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis,                     |  mailto:ajt at rri.sari.ac.uk
Rowett Research Institute,          |    http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
Greenburn Road, Bucksburn,          |   phone:+44 (0)1224 712751
Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK.    |     fax:+44 (0)1224 716687