TightVNC Problems #5905943

[drxenocide]

First post on the forums, hopefully this will not be a chore to read or respond to.

Problem: TightVNC View running on Windows 7 says: "Error in TightVNC Viewer: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it."

Things I have done:
1) Installed Rasbian from noobs on my RPi
2) Set my pi to a static IP address (192.168.1.222) by modifying the /etc/network/interfaces file according to: https://www.andrewmunsell.com/blog/sett ... ess-device
3) Installed TightVNC on my RPi trying to follow http://elinux.org/RPi_VNC_Server as closely as possible.
4) I BELIEVE I have correctly created the vncboot exectuable file correctly because when i type

pi@raspberrypi $ ps aux | grep vnc

I get:

root 2090 0.0 0.1 1756 524 ? S 10:03 0:00 /bin/sh /etc/init.d/vncboot start
root 2091 0.0 0.5 4744 2672 ? S 10:03 0:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/vncserver :0 -geometry 1280x800 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565
root 2101 0.0 0.0 1680 440 ? S 10:03 0:00 vncpasswd /root/.vnc/passwd
pi 2349 0.0 0.1 3548 808 pts/1 S+ 11:45 0:00 grep --color=auto vnc

5) I insalled TightVNC Viewer on Windows 7.
6) I installed Putty on Windows 7, and can SSH into my RPi without problems (192.168.1.222 port 22).
7) I open up TightVNC Viewer and put in: 192.168.1.222::5900 for the connection host. (it also happens for 192.168.1.222::5900, 192.168.1.222::5901, 192.168.1.222::5902, and 192.168.1.222:5900)
8) On all connection attempts I get the same message

I assume that something is wrong on the windows end since vnc server shows up as a process on the RPi. From my reading of the same problems, the user error was usually the server not running on the Pi, or the user forgetting to put ::5900 at the end of the IP address.

[ukscone]

A couple of things.

1. i've found that sometimes especially if i've only just started tightvnc server on the raspi that i need to try a couple of times to connect from win7 viewer as the 1st time it refuses also sometimes I need to kill tightvnc server on the raspi then restart it if it's been running for a long time before I am trying to use it

2. you need to connect to port 5901 as tightvnc server puts the display on port 5900+display number
e.g. New 'X' desktop is glooston:1

means glooston (my raspi):5900 (vnc port)+1

[DougieLawson]

Try
192.168.1.222:1 or 192.168.1.222:5901
on your vnc client.

Just one colon.

[drxenocide]

Thanks guys, but the 192.168.1.222:5901 (or 192.168.1.222::5901 or 192.168.1.222::1 or 192.168.1.222:1) isn't working either.

[DougieLawson]

Then look at what firewall you've got on Windows that may be blocking that.

You may need to convince Windows that machines in your 192.168.1.0/24 subnet are all kosher and can be trusted.

[drxenocide]

So I got it working.

After uninstalling (using sudo apt-get purge) Tight VNC, deleting my boot script, reinstalling TightVNC, installing x11vnc, and then uninstalling x11vnc, and then rebooting (in that order) - I then tried using 192.168.1.122::5900 and I got a login and a screen. The screen was j ust grey but I was almost there.

Then after sleeping on it, I realized that the command I had been running was:
vncserver :0 -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24
so that was opening a port on ::5900. I tried opening on ::5901 (on the viewer) after using the command (on the server):
vncserver :1 -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24
but when I tried to connect it said the port was open but there was no data. So I opened up another server on :2 using:
vncserver :2 -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24
Then when I connected to 192.168.1.222::5902 it showed me a login screen where I typed in my screen password (not pi password). I typed it in and finally saw my desktop.

BTW if you forget your TightVNC screen password, just delete the password file at /home/pi/.vnc/passwd which you can find as a running process by typing "ps aux | grep vnc" - which will show you active vnc processes that have the word "vnc" in them (I used it a lot).

Another thing I did between reinstallations (although I dont know if it did anything) was I got prompts that certain files were preventing the starting of a TightVNC process, so as prompted I removed them via:
"sudo rm /tmp/.X11-unix/X0"
"sudo rm /tmp/.X0-lock"

Now I can realize my dream - using mathematica at home while paying less than hundreds of dollars on their exorbitant licensing fees.