Some VNC questions


ksarnelli

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I've been running ESXi for a while (as well as unRAID for storage/dockers) and decided to migrate a bunch of my VMs over to unRAID.

 

The migration went well...but long story short, the NoVNC client is absolutely terrible.  Therefore I'd like to use an external VNC client.  I had a few issues/questions:

 

  1. What's the best practice on using an external VNC client (that has a fixed address book, so a static port is required)?  I assume you can't use the auto option, so I specified the port in the XML and got it to work.  I also want to password protect it, which I assume has to be done in the GUI and the issue is that wipes out my static port setting.  How do I specify a static port and restrict access via a password?
  2. Does anyone else have major issues with the version of VNC server that is being used for VMs?   RealVNC throws protocol errors almost every time I try to connect.  UltraVNC seems to work reliably, but it doesn't have an address book capability that I know of.

 

I guess I'm used to ESXi where everything just works, but really hoping someone can help me out here.  Thanks!

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You are right in that using Edit mode always resets the VNC port to auto (I have raised a feature request for being able to set it to a static value in Edit mode).  You might get around your problem by setting the password first and then afterwards using the Edit XML option to switch to a static port.

 

in terms of VNC clients I use realVNC which allows me to have lots of preset VNC connections and activate the ones I want to use on demand.

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5 minutes ago, itimpi said:

You might get around your problem by setting the password first and then afterwards using the Edit XML option to switch to a static port.

 

I tried that, but it seems that 'Edit XML' removes the password and 'Edit' removes the static port.  So you can only have one or the other :o

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12 minutes ago, ksarnelli said:

 

I tried that, but it seems that 'Edit XML' removes the password and 'Edit' removes the static port.  So you can only have one or the other :o

If that is the case then the only way around that I could see (which is a bit messy and error prone) is bypass the GUI and access the xml files from the Command line to set the static port.

 

you might want to add a comment about your problem to my post in the feature request area asking for GUI support for setting static ports.

Edited by itimpi
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/23/2017 at 1:54 PM, ksarnelli said:
  1. Does anyone else have major issues with the version of VNC server that is being used for VMs?   RealVNC throws protocol errors almost every time I try to connect.  UltraVNC seems to work reliably, but it doesn't have an address book capability that I know of.

 

Just in case anyone else frequently gets RFB protocol error when connecting to a VM with RealVNC, I found a solution here:

 

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/vms-using-freenas-11-gui-error-connecting-via-vnc-at-linux-setup.54582/

 

Basically, just change the quality level from 'Auto' to 'High'.  Works like a charm.

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