[mythtv-users] A recent discussion reminded me of a backburner issue

[Simon Hobson]

Stephen P. Villano <stephen.p.villano at gmail.com> wrote:

> My mythbuntu 12.04 64 bit machine never did have VNC work.
> I'd get a blank desktop, no WM functions at all. Screen at the physical

AFAIK, the "normal" setup on Unix/Linux type systems is that the VNC session is separate to the physical display - very different from Windows/Mac systems. I believe it is possible to setup a shared display, but it's a different setup.

So somewhere during system startup, there should be a VNC server started with an associated X-system display server running. When you connect with a VNC client, you connect to this X server which is unrelated to the X server that's providing a display on your physical monitor.

Having said that, I normally just connect with a local X server on my machine and launch programs from there. Eg, from my Mac I can open an SSH session to my backend with the "X" option - this sets up all the behind the scenes gubbins for X to work. Then I can just run (eg) mythtv-setup and the setup program will launch - the program runs on the backend and the display happens on my Mac.

For X, using a display on the same machine as the running program is done the same as if they are on different machines - it's just that the network connection is local.