Hi all,
I'm running CentOS 5 (32 bit), and want to connect using NX from my mac powerbook (10.4.9 PPC) as client. I get as far as being authenticated, but my gnome desktop does not come up. (I can get it with VNC over ssh.) Setting SELinux to permissive made no difference. My question is what do I have to do to get the desktop? I'm stumped. Any help much appreciated!
Details:
I did a clean install of CentOS 5 (Pentium 4, stable IP address).
I followed the steps at http://wiki.centos.org/FreeNX and have it installed, Version 1.5.0-60-SVN OS .
I used nxserver to add my non-priv account (lets pretend its "jg") as an nx user and set my nx password for that account.
I downloaded the mac client from nomachine (version 2.1.0-17). I set up the client, including desktop=unix, gnome, and all seemed to go well.
The client on the mac starts up X11 (unless its already running) and then goes through the connecting ... authenticating ... authentication completed. But it then times out after about a minute, nothing else happens on the client side. During this time, on the remote (CentOS) machine, its clear that something is happening, because "ps -ef | grep nx" gives me
root 5627 3378 0 10:38 ? 00:00:00 sshd: nx [priv]
nx 5629 5627 0 10:38 ? 00:00:00 sshd: nx@notty
nx 5630 5629 0 10:38 ? 00:00:00 /bin/bash /usr/bin/nxserver -c /usr/bin/nxserver
nx 5771 5630 0 10:38 ? 00:00:00 sleep 60
jg 5800 5393 0 10:38 pts/1 00:00:00 grep nx
After it times out, ps returns nothing with 'nx' in it (except the grep).
I checked out a couple other things on the web on how to set it up and these did not help (they were very helpful! just not with my problem about the desktop not coming up). E.g.,
http://fedoranews.org/contributors/rick_stout/freenx/
these typically end by saying "isn't that awesome?!" or "You should now be able to connect to the Server machine and open your desktop from the client. Please see NoMachine Support for more information". But I had no desktop and did not see anything at nomachine about what to do if a desktop does not come up.
I presume that the gnome desktop should just come up in an X11 window on the client. I don't get anything new happening, the nx client connection mini-window remains, with the graphic of the client being connected to the server.
One possible clue: I have read that you should be able to do something like
ssh nx@
but I can't connect this way. The remote machine prompts me for a password for nx but I have no idea what the password for nx is. (Not surprisingly, the root password and my nx user password do not work here.) as root, I tried 'nxserver --passwd nx' but it said that
NX> 100 NXSERVER - Version 1.5.0-60-SVN OS (GPL)
NX> 500 Error: User nx not found in database.
NX> 999 Bye
----
Another possible clue, in thread "FreeNX problem...", pjwelsh suggested
"As a quick sanity check, make sure that the /var/lib/nxserver/db/running/ exists and has correct permissions."
For me the directory exists (nx is the owner and has rwx permission) but the dir is empty
----
And 3rd, in thread "freenx and problem with RDP connection"
it discusses settings within
/etc/nx/nxnode.conf
I did not have this file, so I copied /etc/nxserver/node.conf.sample to node.conf, and edited it to enable logging (log level 4), and uncommented the line about starting gnome:
COMMAND_START_GNOME="/usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/gnome-session"
Now after trying to connect, I get a log file on the server (prior to making /etc/nxserver/node.conf I did not have a log at /var/log/nxserver.log ). The log says:
-- NX SERVER START: -c /usr/bin/nxserver - ORIG_COMMAND=
HELLO NXSERVER - Version 1.5.0-60-SVN OS (GPL)
NX> 105 hello NXCLIENT - Version 1.5.0
NX> 134 Accepted protocol: 1.5.0
NX> 105 SET SHELL_MODE SHELL
NX> 105 SET AUTH_MODE PASSWORD
NX> 105 login
NX> 101 User: jg
NX> 102 Password:
NX> 103 Welcome to: ***edited*** user: jg
NX> 105 listsession --user="jg" --status="suspended,running" --geometry="1280x854x32+render" --type="unix-gnome"
NX> 127 Sessions list of user 'jg' for reconnect:
Display Type Session ID Options Depth Screen Status Session Name
------- ---------------- -------------------------------- -------- ----- -------------- ----------- ---------------------------
---
NX> 148 Server capacity: not reached for user: jg
NX> 105 startsession --link="isdn" --backingstore="1" --nodelay="1" --encryption="1" --cache="8M" --images="32M" --media="0" -
-session="from_home" --type="unix-gnome" --geometry="1024x768+128+30" --kbtype="query" --screeninfo="1024x768x32+render"
NX> 1004 Error: Session did not start.
Thanks much for any ideas!