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I have used and configured vnc many a times before but facing this strange issue for the first time. Here are my steps of configuring vnc on Amazon (RHEL 6.2 64-bit, AMI: ami-2fd5441f):

Server Configuration

  • Install desktop packages: # yum -y groupinstall "Desktop" "X Window System"
  • Install vnc server: # yum -y install tigervnc-server.x86_64 libXfont.x86_64
  • Start vncserver: # vncserver
  • Enable vncserver to start after the reboot: # chkconfig vncserver on
  • Either stop iptables or configure them accordingly: # service iptables stop and # chkconfig iptables off
  • append below two lines to /etc/sysconfig/vncservers:

VNCSERVERS="2:ec2-user" and VNCSERVERARGS[2]="-geometry 1280x1024 -nolisten tcp -localhost"

  • append below line to ~/.vnc/xstartup (this would be ec2-user's home directory): exec gnome-session
  • Reboot the server: # reboot

Windows client (laptop) configuration

  • Install vnc viewer on windows laptop
  • Connect with below string: hostname_of_server:5901
  • Also, EC2 security groups are configured accordingly for VNC access.

Now, when I connect using windows vnc client, I get the successfull connection but I get below window where nothing is clickable:

enter image description here

I have also checked below settings on my vnc client which will allow keyboard/mouse inputs:

enter image description here

Question: I have never faced this issue before where the VNC console is "NOT CLICKABLE" And I am not able to figure what am I doing wrong.

Update: I tried connecting using gtkvncviewr installed on ubuntu and the results were exactly the same. I get the window but nothing is clickable.

Giacomo1968
  • 58,727
slayedbylucifer
  • 281

5 Answers5

5

After spending almost a week freaking out on this issue, I solved it myself. The solution was to update libX11. I ran below yum command and things are flying now.

yum install libX11
slayedbylucifer
  • 281
3

I also faced this issue. In my case the problem was not related to libX11 but was caused by the screensaver running on the target host (xubuntu). Killing the screensaver with command below solved the problem.

pkill -f "xfce4-screensaver"

3r1d
  • 131
1

In my case, the VNC Client on my Windows machine had "View-Only" checkbox enabled.

To resolve it I had to

  1. Hover mouse at the top+center of the VNC client screen after connecting to my ubuntu VNC Server
  2. Click on "Settings" from the VNC Client (in the top+center menu)
  3. Goto "Options" tab in the dialog window that opened up.
  4. Spot a checkbox under "General" named "View-Only"
  5. And disable it
Venkat S
  • 11
1

The culprit in my case was buggy gnome-shell.

ps -U <user> | grep gnome-shell

kill -9 <space seperated pids from above output>

I got my vnc session recoverd this way.

ashishsony
  • 734
1

I got the same problem where any of the keyboard inputs were not taken in VNC. I tried out few random trials one of them worked.

  • Do the full screen and then it started taking the keyboard input. Surprisingly it kept working even after I exited full screen.

I know this is not technical solution or explanation why it worked but it worked for me. If somebody gets this issue you can try this.

Jackdaw
  • 1,834
user2203913
  • 11