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Gnome VNC Grey Checkboxes

When setting up VNC server in Gnome, I get a grey screen (or a black one) and the checkboxes to "Accept clipboard from viewers", "Send clipboard to viewers", "Send primary selection to viewers".


I'm setting up a VNC server on a Debian 10 machine that has Gnome environment.

A zillion articles can be found on Internet, they have the same global path:
  1. Install Gnome and GDM
  2. Install TigerVNC
  3. Setup the VNC Server: password + startup
  4. Run the server
  5. Connect from the client
One of them is this TeknoTut how-to I took inspiration from.

The tutorial is good, but I needed to complete it with extra steps in order to make it work: If the current user has already a running Gnome session, I just get the "grey screen with the checkboxes".

It is good to know that:
  1. The "grey screen" is due to the "xsetroot" command that can be seen in some howtos
  2. The checkboxes are due to the "vncconfig -iconic &" command
When you get them, then, it means that the "vncstartup" file has been exectued, but partially: you miss the gnome-session one, mostly because there a currently running Gnome session.

How did I make it work


In order to make it work on my Debian 10 machine:
  1. I boot the machine until GDM
  2. I don't log in with  GDM
  3. I log in through SSH
  4. I run the "vncserver [with its arguments]" command
  5. When connecting from the VNC client, I got the full environment!





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