Temperamental VNC

[Michael Pavling]

On 1 September 2010 23:45, Hakan Koseoglu <hakan at koseoglu.org> wrote:
> On 1 September 2010 23:33, Michael Pavling <pavling at gmail.com> wrote:
>> onto it and launch VNCserver (I've installed TightVNC) I can log on
>> and it works fine for a time. But at some point - generally when I
>> click a button in VirtualBox, the VNC viewer closes on my PC, and in
> Which button?

Any button.. sometimes when I click "settings" on a VM, sometimes when
I'm adjusting settings, sometimes when I click "run", but always the
second I click something - it never just dies when my back is turned.

> You can run VM with with "VBoxManage startvm -name --type vrdp" and
> use rdesktop to access the console, if you insist.

I do - I'm using VRDP to each VM, which works very well. I have
sourced a nice script that starts the machines I want when the host
boots. I'm quite familiar with the day-to-day start and stop command
line, and can muddle through the more complex admin and create
functions, but I'd *rather* not.

> The rest of the management can be done with an ssh session, you should
> not need anything else.

So why is there VNC in the first place? Because there *is* a GUI that
people *want* to get to - 'wants' and 'needs' are different :-)

> If you have commands which you cannot
> terminate or leave running with nohup or in the background, install
> "screen".

The answer to "does anyone know why VNC keeps crashing?" is not "it
won't crash if you don't use it".
I want to be able to get to a (reliable) GUI over the network. Do you
know how I can achieve this (with VNC or otherwise)?

>> to avoid the process terminations, but I have to be logged in on the
>> console for it to work, which isn't acceptable long term - I need to
>> be able to reboot without concern)
> Surely you know how to use shutdown command, "shutdown -r" will reboot
> the server.

Yes, as will "reboot" - but I can't remote desktop on again until I've
plugged a monitor into the console and logged in as a user - this it
the concern I'd rather not have (not "how do I reboot an Ubuntu
machine from the command line?").