BIRCH
Setting up VNC for users automatically



The default vncserver script creates a $HOME/.vnc/xstartup file that runs the twm window manager, which is useless for most purposes. Ideally, the system administrator should modify the vncserver script to use the system default desktop. Many sysadmins fail to do this. Others forget to redo the fix when updating to a new version of VNC.

To work around this problem, BIRCH provides a script called 'vncsetup'. To use this, the BIRCH administrator should create a global xstartup file in $BIRCH/local/admin/xstartup. If this file exists, vncsetup will check for the existence of $HOME/.vnc/xstartup. If that file is not found, the BIRCH xstartup file will be copied to the user's .vnc directory. If the user already has an xstartup script, then vncsetup will do nothing.

The BIRCH 'newuser' script automatically runs vncsetup, so that as soon as a user sets up their account for BIRCH, they will also have access to vnc, using the specified desktop.

If you want BIRCH to automatically create a working .vnc/xstartup file for each new user, simply create a $BIRCH/local/admin/xstartup file, and  make sure it is world-readable. For example, on most Linux and Solaris systems, the following file will run a GNOME desktop in vnc:

#!/bin/sh
gnome-session &

Note: The global xstartup file must be world-readable, and should probably be user-executable ie. chmod 700 xstartup. It is not necessary, since the vncsetup script will automatically run chmod 700 after copying the file to the user's .vnc directory. However,  it couldn't hurt to give the file the correct permissions to begin with.


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