Upgraded to 20.04 and now my VNC connection no longer works...

[Keith]

On 3/5/21 10:56 AM, Bo Berglund wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Mar 2021 15:55:18 +0100, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
>> hi,
>> Am Freitag, den 05.03.2021, 15:37 +0100 schrieb Bo Berglund:
>>>
>>> So if vnc4server has been dropped from the Ubuntu repository, what
>>> alternatives
>>> are there to use a headless Ubuntu 20 via VNC?
>>
>> vnc4server has been dropped from VNC ...
>>
>> debian and ubuntu just inherit that ...
>>
>> you should be able to use their new package: tigervnc-standalone-server
>> (no idea if the configuration is still compatible though)
>
> Thanks,
>
> so I have googled further and found a number of alternatives:
> - TightVNC
> - X11VNC
> - TigerVNC
> (and there might be more...)
>
> So now I would like to know if a package like tightvnc is *available* via apt,
> but without installing it.
>
> Is there a command to check the availability of a package in the apt repository
> without actually installing it?
>
> I am confused by the behaviour of apt install, because sometimes it works to
> check things and then asks if I want to continue with the install.
> But other times it just performs the installation directly, which is not really
> optimal (the confusion, I mean).
>
> So is there another way to know if a package is actually present on the apt
> repo?
>
> Googling just gives me responses on how to check what apt has *already*
> installed on my system...
>
> Btw, who is maintaining TigerVNC? Is it the RealVNC company or someone else?
>
>

The "apt-cache" program is used for getting information about packages
in the configured repos.

$ apt-cache search tight |grep -i vnc

tigervnc-common - Virtual network computing; Common software needed by
servers
tigervnc-scraping-server - Virtual network computing server performing X
screen scraping
tigervnc-standalone-server - Standalone virtual network computing server
tigervnc-viewer - Virtual network computing client for X
tigervnc-xorg-extension - Virtual network computing X server extension

"apt-cache show <packagename>" will show further details about each
package usually including a website address where the project lives.

Also, concerning package installation/removal via apt or apt-get: you
can add the "-s" option to the command-line to run a simulated action so
you can see the results before any actual change to the system is made.

$ sudo apt-get -s install tightvncserver

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
   tightvnc-java
The following NEW packages will be installed:
   tightvncserver
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Inst tightvncserver (1.3.10-0ubuntu5 Ubuntu:20.04/focal [amd64])
Conf tightvncserver (1.3.10-0ubuntu5 Ubuntu:20.04/focal [amd64])


--
Keith