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b_laoshi
Asked: 2021-01-17 13:49:00 +0800 CST

VNC for remote login with Wayland? -- 20.04

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I've been running Ubuntu 20.04 for some time now. I had a remote machine set up so that I could VNC into it using x11vnc at the login screen if necessary using the Xauthority file at /run/user/125/gdm/Xauthority (no, there should not be a dot in front of Xauthority in this context). All of the sudden, I try to access it today and find that I can't!

I did some digging, and it looks like the login interface was switched over from X11 to Wayland sometime in the last month or two. I could probably just switch everything back to X11, but if Wayland is the future, I'd rather find a working solution in Wayland.

Thus my questions is this. How do I get VNC working on the login screen? I do not want RDP solutions; my RDP connection is working fine!

I'm guessing the vino-server application could handle logins, but it does not start until after a user logs in. In this case, simply configuring a user to automatically login will not work. There are issues (I'm guessing with the video card driver) that cause auto logins to fail.

20.04

1 Answers

  1. Vino is x11 only; on Wayland+Gnome, the only available software is gnome-remote-desktop.

    apt-cache show gnome-remote-desktop:
(...)
 This feature will not work on Ubuntu until mutter is recompiled
 with the remote desktop option enabled.

    On Ubuntu 20.04, Mutter (the Gnome compositor) is compiled without remote desktop option, from 'apt source mutter', file debian/rules:

    # pipewire is not in Ubuntu main yet
ifeq ($(DEB_HOST_ARCH_OS),linux)
ifeq ($(shell dpkg-vendor --query vendor),Ubuntu)
    CONFFLAGS += -Dremote_desktop=false

    so short of trying to recompile mutter (and live with the Ubuntu upgrades after), the only way is to switch back to x11.

    It seems that for the next LTS release, 22.04 (aka Jammy Jellyfish), Pipewire will be added to main repo:

    https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/the-state-of-wayland-vs-x-esp-in-regard-to-to-the-next-lts/12576/26

    and that finally remote desktop will work completely with Wayland:

    https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/desktop-team-updates-monday-15th-february-2021/20899/12

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