A plea for help - x11vnc Autostart

HELP! I have been at this for days and am giving up hope of ever finding a working solution. I have read just about every post I can find here and on other forums. I have followed a variety of instructions/methods. I have tried with autologin as pi and root.

No matter what I do, x11vnc will NOT autostart. I can open a terminal as pi or root and paste in the following and x11vnc works just fine (apart from the -noipv6 which still shows a stream of ipv6 errors during initialising).

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x11vnc -rfbauth /home/pi/.vnc/passwd -forever -noipv6 -display :0

My request - could someone upload a zipped .img file with x11vnc autostarting? Possibly with a link to the instructions they followed.

I know this is not a 'best solution' but I am at my wits end and am plain out of ideas.

HELP! I have been at this for days and am giving up hope of ever finding a working solution. I have read just about every post I can find here and on other forums. I have followed a variety of instructions/methods. I have tried with autologin as pi and root.

No matter what I do, x11vnc will NOT autostart. I can open a terminal as pi or root and paste in the following and x11vnc works just fine (apart from the -noipv6 which still shows a stream of ipv6 errors during initialising).

Code: Select all

x11vnc -rfbauth /home/pi/.vnc/passwd -forever -noipv6 -display :0

My request - could someone upload a zipped .img file with x11vnc autostarting? Possibly with a link to the instructions they followed.

I know this is not a 'best solution' but I am at my wits end and am plain out of ideas.

Don't panic. You just have to add your code to the right file. I don't recall the file offhand but if someone else doen't answer the question in the next few hours, I'll research it.

HELP! I have been at this for days and am giving up hope of ever finding a working solution. I have read just about every post I can find here and on other forums. I have followed a variety of instructions/methods. I have tried with autologin as pi and root.

No matter what I do, x11vnc will NOT autostart. I can open a terminal as pi or root and paste in the following and x11vnc works just fine (apart from the -noipv6 which still shows a stream of ipv6 errors during initialising).

Code: Select all

x11vnc -rfbauth /home/pi/.vnc/passwd -forever -noipv6 -display :0

My request - could someone upload a zipped .img file with x11vnc autostarting? Possibly with a link to the instructions they followed.

I know this is not a 'best solution' but I am at my wits end and am plain out of ideas.

Don't panic. You just have to add your code to the right file. I don't recall the file offhand but if someone else doen't answer the question in the next few hours, I'll research it. I think it is /etc/rc.local

I think it is /etc/rc.local

Afraid not.

I added -o /home/pi/.vnc/vnclog.txt on a hunch. It reports XOpenDisplay (":0") failed.

I believe this is because rc.local is processed before X11 starts.

What you can do is make a script with two commands.

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#!/bin/bash
sleep 25
x11vnc -rfbauth /home/pi/.vnc/passwd -forever -noipv6 -display :0


You then call this script in local.rc with a '&' at the end, then the script will run in the background, it will take a 25 sec pause so the X can start and then run x11vnc.
Its not a pretty way of doing it but I think it would work.

No luck.

in/etc/rc.local I added

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/home/pi/.vnc/startvnc.sh &

in /home/pi/.vnc/startvnc.sh I have

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#!/bin/sh
sleep 25
x11vnc -rfbauth /home/pi/.vnc/passwd -forever -noipv6 -display :0 -o /home/pi/.vnc/vnclog.txt

chmod 755 startvnc.sh

Reboot, wait 30 sec after desktop appears, try to connect - nothing. Also - no vnclog.txt file created so I doubt it was run.

If I open a terminal as pi, cd .vnc and run ./startvnc.sh it runs properly so I doubt the problem is there.

rc.local is owned by root while startvnc.sh is owned by pi. Could that effect things?

Is there anywhere that errors would be logged? Doing this blind is extremely frustrating as an error log might point out something fixable.

01:40 in the UK - enough, time for some ZZZzzzzs and start fresh Monday.

You have a few options: You can create an .xsessionrc or an .xinitrc in your user 'pi' home folder with the x11vnc commands and it'll start upon X starting.

The other option is to create a directory under ~/.config/autostart if it doesn't already exist. In this folder create a file named 'x11vnc.desktop' with the following:

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[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Name=X1VNC
Comment=
Exec=[i]x11vnc -whatever options you want to start x11vnc with...[/i]
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Hidden=false

Apparently I can't use the italics code in the code block and I can't edit my post as it needed moderation first and too much time has passed. Ignore the "[ i ]" and "[ /i ]" in my post above

Well, that was not fun.

I created the .xsessionrc and added the x11vnc command with parameters. Rebooted - black screen!

Should I have added #!/bin/sh as the first line?
Should I have marked the file as executable?

Do I now have to re-write the SD card and start again?

[Update]
I remembered that I can access from my PC using PuTTY. File deleted, reboot OK.
I will wait for a response before doing anything else.

WOW!!!!

I have always been impatient

I decided to give the ~/.config/autostart/x11vnc.desktop route a try. I also made the file executable just in case.

IT WORKS!!!!

My RPi arrived exactly 1 week ago and this is the only thing I have been doing (4-5 hours each evening) since then. I thought I had tried this method before. I will now save an image so I can use it as a basic start in future.

THANK YOU.

Glad to hear it all worked out. Other users have had issues with the black screen when running from xinitrc or sessionrc but I'm not certain why. Perhaps it's been initiated before LXDE? The autostart folder is read by the window manager after startup to it's initialized a little later in the chain.

Cheers!

I have made a minor change due to x11vnc sometimes not starting. I pointed the autostart command to the .vnc shell script. All seems stable now.