Enabling VNC in Solaris Express 11

Enabling VNC Under Solaris 11 Express

Abstract:
Open Systems have traditionally been accessed via Command Line. MIT create a fully object oriented, multi-tiered, open source windowing system called X Windows, which was quickly adopted by nearly all computing industry players. While X Windows is well suited for local area network technology, the need for wide area network technology was addressed through several different attempts, such as X11R6 "Broadway" and proxies leveraging compression. A lighter WAN suitable screen display protocol, referred to as Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is also commonly used for X displays.

Procedure:
Solaris 10 was shipped with VNC, instructions for enabling VNC under Solaris are found here.

Solaris 11 Express was shipped with a basic VNC service mostly available. The procedure to fully enable VNC under Solaris 11 is as follows:

• Load Gnome Desktop Manager

# pkg install slim_install

• After the ~400mb package is installed note the following issue:

# svcs consolekit
STATE STIME FMRI maintenance 1999 svc:/system/consolekit:default

The GDM depends on the console-kit-daemon for "defining and tracking users"
(console-kit-daemon man page). A generic error will occur telling you that a consolekit dependency is restarting too quickly.

• Check the consolekit dependencies for restarting:

# svcs -d consolekit
online 1999 svc:/system/dbus:default
online 1999 svc:/system/filesystem/local:default

The -r is to recursively enable the daemon and then dependencies in the correct order.

#svcadm disable dbus
#svcadm clear consolekit
#svcadm enable -r consolekit

• A console will need to be provided to the passive VNC X Server through X Display Management Control Protocol.

# vi /etc/gdm/custom.conf
[xdmcp] Enable=true
wq

• A restart of the Gnome Display Manager and enabling of Xvnc are the last steps.

# svcadm restart gdm
# svccfg -s x11-server setprop options/tcp_listen=true
# svcadm enable xvnc-inetd