I am having problems in the connection between two Alphas running VNC. One
problem is in having a full CDE session inclusive of dtlogin, the other is
a keyboard problem,

- The viewer machine has an old version of the OS (Digital Unix 3.2)
  and a 3.3.2 VNC binary distribution from the original ORL site (which
  I always used).

- The server machine has a newer version of the OS (Tru64 4.0g) and the
  3.3.3r1 VNC binary distribution just installed from
  ftp://public.arl.arizona.edu/pub/sware/vnc-current_osf.tgz
  (I could not compile from source since I have no C++ compiler)

My VMC background and my intents are specified at the end of this mail.
Here are my problems.

(1) keyboard problem

    I am currently having a keyboard mapping problem. When I type
    something in a terminal window (dxterm) in the VNC screen I get
    rubbish : I type a and get 3, I type x and get 7, I type carriage
    return and get a comma ....

    ... it is impossible to work !

    I cannot swear that the problem has been always there. I installed
    VNC on the 4.0g system last Friday, and I tested it very quickly.
    I had the impression it worked, but cannot swear that I tried to
    type something, or just tested opening and closing windows, changing
    workspaces and other window manager functions.

    I suspect it worked before I tried the tests to run a full CDE session
    inclusive of login. Maybe there is something which went amiss and I
    forgot to repristinate.

    I have no keyboard problem during the dtlogin phase !!

    Now I have this keyboard problem even I start VNC at user level
    on the server with

        vncserver -nolisten local :1

    and connect to it from the 3.2 machine as   vncviewer servername:1

    I do not have the problem if my viewer connects to a Solaris server
    started in the same way. I have the problem with any viewer on any
    machine, even a viewer on the same machine as the server !!

(2) running a full CDE session

    I did not find a tutorial about running a full session starting
    from login (as if the server were on an NT machine in "service"
    mode). I arranged the following way based on some rather obscure
    hints I saw in the archives.

    a) the VNC server shall be started as
       vncserver -once -query servername:1

    b) the xstartup file (in the /.vnc directory of root) shall be
       a zero-size file

    c) the /etc/dt/config/Xservers shall contain an additional line
       besides the default one, in order to use XDMCP

       :0   Local local@console /usr/bin/X11/X :0
       :1   VNC   local@none    XXX YYY -once -query servername :1

       if correctly configured (how ?) this should start a dtlogin
       under Xvnc.

    d) here I am not really sure about what should go in the second
       field (I wrote VNC instead of Local, but could write anything)

       and also I am not sure about the third field (local@none or
       foreign ?)

       YYY for me was -geometry 1268x1024 (the idea is that I could
       run full screen as the two Alphas are identical)

       XXX is /myownpath/myvncserver which is a copy of vncserver
       where I commented out the lines in sub SanityCheck which
       check "we have all the commands we'll need on the path."
       and "Check the HOME environment variable is set".

       If I left them in, dtlogin and Xvnc did not start at boot
       (error messages in /var/dt/Xerrors)

I tested the above by trial and errors, with dtlogin -reset when
appropriate (and also a lot of reboots when I was not sure).

I am not sure whether the above is correct. I was however able to connect
with a viewer and get a nearly normal CDE login screen (see minor problems
below) with the above configuration starting at boot, and also running
manually steps a and b

I get the login mask, I can type the username and see it echoed correctly
(so AT THIS STAGE the keyboard works !!!), then type the password (and it
also is recognised since I am logged in). After that I cannot work because
of the keyboard problem.

I also have some "minor" problems. If you can confirm my XDNCP arrangement
and solve my keyboard problem, I'd also appreciate an adives


(3) minor problems

 a) one minor problem is that if I run the viewer in full screen, still
    the window manager decoration take some part of the screen and my
    server CDE session has some windows partially hidden under the
    top of the virtual screen

 b) this is uncomfortable, combined with the fact I cannot use my
    accelerators (Alt-Fn keys sequences) to move the windows (they
    move the overall viewer !) ... and cannot use the window menus
    since the menu bar is hidden.

 c) one other thing is that in the viewer I can change workspaces (I
    have a rather peculiar CDE arrangement without control panel, I
    use the root menu to change workspace) but the root background
    colour is always the same (on the real machine each workspace
    has a different background colour)

 d) I also cannot do cut and paste between windows on my machine and
    windows in the VNC vitrual screen

 e) a CDE logout (from root menu) works, and kills the viewer. It also
    kills the Xvnc however, and it is not restarted (my main X server
    is killed and restarted at each logout by a change of resources)

 f) the minor problem on the login screen is the following. The Alpha
    login screen has the dtlogin window in the centre, and a dxconsole
    window at the bottom (I changed its bkg colour to make it less
    striking to the eye in /etc/dt/config/Xsetup.

    The VNC login screen does not show the console

  g) another problem was during a trial with server and viewer on the
     same machine. I used the viewer popup to go to full screen ...
     and voila', the viewer disappeared from all workspaces although
     it was still running.

==========================================================================

I have used in the past various combinations of VNC viewers and servers :

  - VNC viewer on Alpha Digital Unix 3.2 (the original 3.3.2 binary
    distribution from ORL)

  - VNC viewers and servers on various Windows 95 and Windows NT PCs
    In particular a VNC server configured as a service on NT

  - VNC servers on a Solaris and an HP-UX machine. The Solaris one I
    still have and is a 3.3.3r1.

In the past my main usage has been running a viewer on my Alpha (I never
ran a server there since I do not have perl) to copy screen dumps from the
machines running the servers, or occasionally to control a process running
four floors below, mainly PC servers.

I however have had the need to access Unix servers running a CDE session,
and I used the trick in the contributed HP-UX version, i.e. placing in the
VNC xstartup file in ~/.vnc

xsession=/usr/dt/bin/Xsession
[ -r $xsession ] && exec $xsession

However that meant that the server had to be started as a particular user,
via telnet or rsh and that I "jumped in" the CDE session on display :1
(I also have to kill the server via rsh)

Now what I want to achieve is to have a VNC server always running on one
Alpha (the idea is that I will remove the main display from it and run it
screenless), and to be able to connect to it with a viewer, get the CDE
login screen, log in as any user, and log out leaving there an instance of
the server for further connections.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucio Chiappetti - IASF/CNR - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There are no news of scientific discoveries  done by administration boards,
presidents or directors general"
                     L.Maiani - CERN & INFN - Corriere della Sera 06/02/2003
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For more info : http://www.mi.iasf.cnr.it/~lucio/personal.html
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