Mint 19 Upgrade - Vino gone?

[darkstrike]

Hi all - just did the upgrade through the Package Manager on my Mint 18.3 MATE desktop. Running Mint 19 nicely atm, but I see that Vino seems to be gone? I use it to remote into my desktop media center PC on my local network from my laptop...? Is there a VNC server built in to Mint 19 still? I tried reinstalling Vino, but there doesn't seem to be a GUI to configure it anymore...?

Also the Mint 19 LiveUSB that I tested had a very nice character map, but I don't seem to have it in my upgraded install....does anybody know which package it is in the package manager so I can reinstall it?

Help would be appreciated!

Cheers!

[greerd]

Looks like vino and remmina aren't installed by default but are in the repos.

[catweazel]

Looks like vino and remmina aren't installed by default but are in the repos.

Odd. The beta shows vino is already installed.

[darkstrike]

I had remmina installed before the upgrade and it stayed with my settings after the upgrade no problem, but I watched the upgrade process remove vino while it was running and was confused as to why! :S

I have Vino reinstalled now, but there is no 'Desktop Sharing' GUI in the 'Start' Menu to change the settings on it, so I am not sure how to get it back up again?

[greerd]

Desktop sharing is vino-preferences but it doesn't get installed with vino, I'm not sure what's going on here.

[darkstrike]

I'll have to try installing that later as my computer is now messed up...see my thread in the Newbie area as I'm stuck on my phone at the moment and it won't let me paste the link for some reason...

[smurphos]

https://github.com/linuxmint/Roadmap/bl ... r/Fixed.md

There's a note here regarding the removal of Vino - along the lines of that Gnome devs have made it useless outside of Gnome. It appears that Gnome have retired vino-preferences as a standalone GUI app - it's not in the repos and looking at vino's dependencies I'd guess that in Gnome it's GUI is integrated into Gnome-Control-Centre.

You should still be able to install vino and manage preferences using Dconf editor and/or gsettings - org.gnome.desktop.remote-access

Anyway if vino is installed the server can be launched with /usr/lib/vino/vino-server --sm-disable, which you'd need to manually add to start-up applications.

Or take the opportunity to try another VNC server - x11vnc is good...

[mk010101]

I had the same issue and difficulties trying to get vino-preferences to work. Nada.

I found and went ahead with these simple instructions and I am back up and running (remotely!)

https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2334

[darkstrike]

Or take the opportunity to try another VNC server - x11vnc is good...

See below!

I had the same issue and difficulties trying to get vino-preferences to work. Nada.

I found and went ahead with these simple instructions and I am back up and running (remotely!)

https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2334

I tried those instructions and got it working with x11vnc, but when connected remotely it seems to only work for a bit, then crash/boot me off, then the only way to get it to work again is for somebody to restart the machine I am connected to! :/

[greerd]

I use x11vnc at work with older systems and with those you have to log in as domain/name:1 (DISPLAY:1) and if you log out of the session instead of killing the connection, you will have to restart the x11vnc-sever on the remote end via ssh. So try just killing the session instead of logging off the remote machine.

Note that if you want to login locally you can with vncviewer and localhost:1 for the address. (in case some wants to work with you on your machine)

Is this maybe the problem you're having?

[darkstrike]

I have no idea.

On my Win10 desktop I just use UltraVNC Viewer and connect to the machine's IP address:portnumber.

On my Linux machines I use Remmina and again connect to said machine's IP address:portnumber.

When I want to stop, I just click the 'X' at the top right in UltraVNC on Windows, or click the 'Close/Disconnect' button in Remmina....?

[greerd]

Sounds like you're doing it right, just disconnect, I'm not sure why it's crashing on you, sorry.

[darkstrike]

No worries, it's just driving me crazy!

[darkstrike]

Ended up leaving X11vnc set up....hopefully it work and the crashing will cease while I am connected...

[sgtor]

I just installed x11vnc and, I only did this twice but I would hit alt-space in a program then hit an arrow key and the arrow key action caused remmina to close and trying to reconnect would fail. So I ended up having to reboot the computer via ssh.

I first tried restarting the vnc server but even that didn't work, which is quite strange, it suggests to me it might be something with remmina. So I restarted both remmina and vnc server and still nothing, so the problem could be either vnc or remm. Only restarting the computer with the vnc server on it worked.

So if I find myself with more time I can figure out what's going on. I don't know if any of that info helps your situation but maybe it does.

[smurphos]

So I ended up having to reboot the computer via ssh.

If you've got ssh access then not running x11vnc as an always on server in an option and instead start the server on demand and tunnel it back to localhost on the client machine. The client app simply connects to localhost on port 5900.

Example ssh command below. Advantages of this method - no VNC port open all of the time, remote access is protected by your SSH credentials and encrypted, the server gracefully shuts down on a disconnect, and with the command example below will shut down if no client connects within 60 seconds.

ssh xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -L 5900:localhost:5900 "x11vnc -safer -localhost -once -timeout 60 -nopw -auth guess -display :0 -noxdamage"

I've never got on with Remmina as a client - always found it slow and clunky - if you use Chrome/Chromium RealVNC provide a client installable as a Chrome app - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... hbla?hl=en . Always been flawless for me.

Another ssh trick is tunnelling individual apps and bypassing VNC altogether - see this thread for interesting discussion and links - viewtopic.php?f=90&t=266128

[altermontrealiste]

I tried x11vnc, works at first but then the connections breaks and impossible to log back into my remote computer.

Never had problems with vino ; LM19 beta apparently had it, should not be that hard to put it back on the LM19 release.

Is it only the gui that is not working? I'll research on running vino with the terminal...

[darkstrike]

You can install Vino on LM19, I did it, but the vino-server command to start the server wouldn't work - just told me the command didn't exist? Also couldn't figure out what file I had to edit or what to do in the command line to set up the settings the way I wanted them either...

[smurphos]

You can install Vino on LM19, I did it, but the vino-server command to start the server wouldn't work - just told me the command didn't exist? Also couldn't figure out what file I had to edit or what to do in the command line to set up the settings the way I wanted them either...

Use dconf-editor to manage the settings

Under dconf-editor the schema you need to navigate to is org.gnome.desktop.remote-access

apt install dconf-editor



Alternative you can use gsettings set in the command line

With gsettings the schema is accessed via org.gnome.Vino

For the list of keys...

Code: Select all

steve@HP-Pavilion-g6-Notebook-PC:~$ gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.Vino
org.gnome.Vino notify-on-connect true
org.gnome.Vino alternative-port uint16 5900
org.gnome.Vino disable-background false
org.gnome.Vino use-alternative-port false
org.gnome.Vino icon-visibility 'always'
org.gnome.Vino use-upnp false
org.gnome.Vino view-only false
org.gnome.Vino prompt-enabled false
org.gnome.Vino disable-xdamage true
org.gnome.Vino authentication-methods ['vnc']
org.gnome.Vino network-interface ''
org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false
org.gnome.Vino mailto ''
org.gnome.Vino lock-screen-on-disconnect false
org.gnome.Vino vnc-password 'cGE1NXcwcmQ='

The password key is not stored in plain text it's hashed. To generate the hash from the plaintext password 'pa55w0rd' (do use something more secure!)

Code: Select all

steve@HP-Pavilion-g6-Notebook-PC:~$ echo -n 'pa55w0rd' | base64
cGE1NXcwcmQ=

To start the server

/usr/lib/vino/vino-server --sm-disable

If you have UFW enabled ensure there is an appropriate rule to allow access in on port 5900.

Connect from the client.

This is me connecting from my phone (with the settings as listed above).



There is a hidden menu item called Desktop-Sharing on the other section of the menu which you can enable via the menu-editor.

[darkstrike]

Thanks so much man, that was a world of help!

Will try it in a moment!