But here is an alternate configuration. In this example, many different users can connect with VNC and login concurrently. Each user will have a private VNC session (not a shared session). And when the user logs out, their VNC session will be closed and their Gnome session will be killed. This is useful if you need a VNC server that can provide Linux desktops to many different people at the same time.

First, note that (unlike Scott’s example above) there is no VNC password. Instead, users must log in each time using their GDM (system account) login. Also, in this setup, VNC gets run as user “nobody” instead of user “root”. (However, when the VNC client user logs in to GDM, they will be acting as the user account they logged in with.)

To set up this multi-user access, the only change from the tutorial above is in the file “/etc/xinetd.d/Xvnc”.

Here is the new version of “/etc/xinetd.d/Xvnc” (for multiple, concurrent user logins):

{
type = UNLISTED
disable = no
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = nobody
server = /usr/bin/Xvnc
server_args = -inetd -query localhost -geometry 1024×768 -depth 16 -once -fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc -NeverShared -SecurityTypes None -extension XFIXES
port = 7900
}

The key differences are:

wait = no
user = nobody
server_args = [...snip...] -SecurityTypes None

Finally, on my VNC desktop server I also run virtual machines using Virt-Manager, libvirtd, and KVM. By default that will use VNC on ports 5900, 5901, 5902, etc. for Virtual Machine terminals. That will conflict is you also try to use those ports for VNC GDM logins.

To avoid a conflict between my Virtual Machine terminals and my GDM VNC logins, I cranked up my VNC port to 7900. That means I’d need to start two thousand Virtual Machines before I’d see a port conflict.

My next post will show an alternate setup.

Thanks again!