Sunday, September 6, 2009

Initial startup of remote Desktop for OpenSolaris

I've not used the xvnc-inetd service on OpenSolaris, but I have been using the vino-server without issue, which is a vnc server. The only gotcha on that is that it requires the keyring password upon first connect to the desktop, so you have to be AT the desktop at least once to "approve" the connection. To get around this and effectively dissociate the vino-server from the keyring, here is a procedure I stole from another web site. This works for me on several installations from 2008.05 on up to 2008.11. Someone may have a more efficient process than this.

Procedure:
First, enable Vino by going to System...Preferences...Desktop Sharing
0. Once you've configured Remote Desktop, go to the
System...Administration...Keyring Manager. Enter your keyring
password when prompted and let it have access to itself if prompted
(!).
1. Highlight the key that contains "vino" in it. Delete that key. Yes.
2. Start gconf-editor
3a. Navigate to desktop...gnome...remote_access.
3b. Click in the empty field to the right of "vnc_password" (the
"value" column). Enter your base64 encoded password from above.
That's it. Don't need to log out. Just connect to the system with a
VNC viewer on display "0" if you didn't change the port number.