Hi, Raymond, I'm not familiar with the unix you describe. HPUX, Solaris, and linux all rely on the environment variable $DISPLAY, which get passed to any subprocesses spawned by the current process (e.g. when you issue a command) because the setenv way of setting the variable designates it as an "envrionment" variable. The Xvnc script seems to automatically set this before calling xsetup, presumably because it has the has the information about the DISPLAY number being used by the VNC servver.
$DISPLAY is a common variables used by many scripts and commands. My guess is that $HOST is suppose to be nonempty string representing your machine name with a ":0.0" suffix added, and $HOST$DISPLAY merely concatenates them together to get fully specified name, including the domain. Or maybe $DISPLAY is suppose to provide the ":0.0". This numbber represents the console screen, so don't use it in xstartup. You shouldn't have to explicitly set DISPLY in xstartup becvause $DISPPLAY changes from one server to another. The vncserver script should set it. As for you .xsetup, I've never heard of that file before. If it is a log file, it might merely be reporting what you already know i.e. that DISPLAY is not properly set. If it is a startup instruction file, then it should not be setting DISPLAY either, for the same reson i.e. most people will be accessing a shared unix machine dfrom a different location than the console, and that location is usually not not predictable. The login windoe takes care of setting DISPLAY (I think it's called xdm or xdmc or something like that). If you get rid of the DISPLAY in .xsetup, it might work. As I mentioned, it is vncserver that invokes xstartup (maybe through another program it calls, Xvnc). You should not have to issue the xstartup command yourself. If that's what you're doing, then DISPLAY will certainly not be automatically set right upon entry into xstartup, unless you manually set it to the display number reported by the vncserver script. The display number is also logged in the log file (in ~/.vnc). Note that the DISPLAY can take a few forms. It often takes the form of ":0.0" without a machine name, in whi\ch case it defaults to the host machine. Most unix systems will respond the the command "hostname" by reporting its machine name. DISPLAY can equivalently take the form "MachineName:0.0" or MachineName.blah.bleh.standford.edu:0.0 . MachineName is often a different machine from the one that sets DISPLAY and runs the programs. This would cause the windows for those programs to open on the remote machine, assuming that all the proper access permissions are in place (which normally happens invisibly). Once again, the 0.0 should be replaced by the proper display number when using VNC, which has no decimal part. Also, when using VNC display numbers, it seems to be not OK to leave out the machine name. Good luck. See if you can show your problem to a system administrator. They are normally very busy people, but they would know if there are any site-specific setup issues that might interfere with the VNC was meant to work. Fred -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fred Ma Department of Electronics Carleton University, Mackenzie Building 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1S 5B6 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ========================================================================== "Raymond R. Balise" wrote: > Thank you kindly for the VNC help. The problem seems to be with the > standard UNIX setups here at Stanford. I have found other people who have > the same problem but nobody who has a solution. > > In my xsetup I typed: > #!/bin/tcsh > echo $HOST$DISPLAY > setenv DISPLAY $HOST$DISPLAY > exit > > The echo is doing what I expected: > tree2.Stanford.EDU:9 > > but the setenv does not seem to affect the system because if I type: > echo $DISPLAY > from shell prompt it display me a blank line. Sorry but I don't know > anything about variable scope in UNIX. Is the scope on the setenv DISPLAY > limited because it is inside of the .xsetup? Got any idea about why this > will not work? > > Thanks again, > Ray > > Ray --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the line: 'unsubscribe vnc-list' in the message BODY See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------
