Any VNC gurus around ?

I've got an old 200 Meg Pentium with 64Mb of memory. I'm currently using
this box as a router + a play tool.

I've looked at VNC 'cos it would be nice to get an X desktop on my 2000 box.
It looks like I have to have to have X started on the Linux box.
Unfortunately, the poor old beast groans and thrashes under the pressure. As
I'm poverty stricken I can't afford to replace the the beast.

Anyone got a moment of genius that would give me a networked desktop without
slugging old faithfull ?

--
Kind Regards

Chris Newey

Chris Newey wrote:

> I've got an old 200 Meg Pentium with 64Mb of memory. I'm currently using
> this box as a router + a play tool.
>
> I've looked at VNC 'cos it would be nice to get an X desktop on my 2000
> box. It looks like I have to have to have X started on the Linux box.
> Unfortunately, the poor old beast groans and thrashes under the
> pressure. As I'm poverty stricken I can't afford to replace the the
> beast.
>
> Anyone got a moment of genius that would give me a networked desktop
> without slugging old faithfull ?

I've never felt VNC to be very thick, but you could just use X networking
without VNC. Of course, that presumes that the server is on your
localnet.

64MB should be plenty for running X+VNC; I've done it with far less. Is it
running any memory-gobbling processes like snort, apache or something?

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:11:43 +0100, Chris Newey wrote:

> I've got an old 200 Meg Pentium with 64Mb of memory. I'm currently using
> this box as a router + a play tool.
>
> I've looked at VNC 'cos it would be nice to get an X desktop on my 2000
> box. It looks like I have to have to have X started on the Linux box.
> Unfortunately, the poor old beast groans and thrashes under the pressure.
> As I'm poverty stricken I can't afford to replace the the beast.
>
> Anyone got a moment of genius that would give me a networked desktop
> without slugging old faithfull ?

You don't need to start any X server except VNC itself, which is one, on
the Linux box. In one application I have I run VNC for the sole purpose of
not having to have a physical X server

Just start up vncserver (I find it helps to specify -geometry as the
default is a bit small) on Linux and connect to it with either a VNC
client or (which I prefer) a web browser on port 5800+offset (the offset
you specified or it defaulted to when you started vncserver).

I don't think vncserver will make much of a dent in that box. Most of
the work is done in the viewer/browser.

Regards, Ian

Hi!

You don't need a running X server for VNC - I don't have either.
Do you want to run kdm/xdm before or start a Window-Manager directly?
What's in you ~/.vnc/xstartup file?

Nicolas

:: Chris Newey
:: Anyone got a moment of genius that would give me a networked desktop
:: without slugging old faithfull ?

Depends on just what features you mean by "a networked desktop",
and what performance tradeoffs you are willing to make.

You can arrange to run an X server on your "2000 box"
(which I assume mans win2k), by using http://x.cygwin.com/
This server would consume no resources on your linux box, but
could display apps running there; the linux box would require
only the resources needed to run the apps, not the display.

The downside of this method is, you can't view that desktop remotely.
Or rather, you can, but it's not normal. To view such a desktop remotely,
you can run http://karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html, which will
provide VNC access to the cygwin/x server.

So. You'll have X-style network displays, and a VNC-style network
desktop, and very small resource footprint on the linux box. However,
useof remote VNC-style access from some third box will have sucky
performance. It'll work, but have noticeable latency to screen updates
and such. Note again: delays ONLY when using VNC from a third location;
when you are in front of the 2000 box, it'll be quite fast and responsive.

Now, with 64mb, you should be able to get Xvnc to run on the linux box,
and a vncviewer on the 2000 box, which would give you better latency,
if the linux box wouldn't thrash. And you wouldn't have to bother with
cygwin/x or arcane options to x11vnc. You'd need *not* to run the
normal XFree86 server on the linux box ( or possibly, you could use a
simpler set of x11vnc options plus XF86 in place of Xvnc, or possibly
use http://xf4vnc.sourceforge.net/ ), but Xvnc by itself should take no
more than, oh, 10 or 20 megabytes, depending.

So anyways. There are ways of shuffling the load around such that
you can probably get something that fits. And if you merely mean
you want networkable displaying, but not a persistent virtual desktop,
then you don'tn even need VNC at all.

: Svein Ove Aas <svein+(E-Mail Removed)>
: 64MB should be plenty for running X+VNC; I've done it with far less. Is it
: running any memory-gobbling processes like snort, apache or something?

True. I've run Xvnc on a 32mb machine even. Wasn't much left over,
but it ran and you could bring up simple apps. If you needed to bring
up mozilla... well... then you'll need *at* *least* 64mb to have both.


Wayne Throop (E-Mail Removed) http://sheol.org/throopw

"Chris Newey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Qxxkc.2730$(E-Mail Removed) t...
> I've got an old 200 Meg Pentium with 64Mb of memory. I'm currently using
> this box as a router + a play tool.
>
> I've looked at VNC 'cos it would be nice to get an X desktop on my 2000
box.
> It looks like I have to have to have X started on the Linux box.
> Unfortunately, the poor old beast groans and thrashes under the pressure.
As
> I'm poverty stricken I can't afford to replace the the beast.
>
> Anyone got a moment of genius that would give me a networked desktop
without
> slugging old faithfull ?
>
> --
> Kind Regards
>
> Chris Newey
>
>

Thanks to everyone - looks like the concensus is I don't need an X session
on the linux box. So I'll try setting up VNC server on the linux box and
running VNC Client on the 2000 box.

Admittedly, i'm running Apache 1.3 & 2 but its getting very few hits as its
only used by the internal network. I'm running MySql + Postgress, neither of
which appear to slug the machine.

Running X on the Linux box deafens my ears with the disk thrashing. If VNC
client on the 2000 box doesn't kill the performance then I'll go that way -
anyway I'll give it a try.

Cheers All

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:11:43 +0100,
Chris Newey <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> I've got an old 200 Meg Pentium with 64Mb of memory. I'm currently using
> this box as a router + a play tool.
>
> I've looked at VNC 'cos it would be nice to get an X desktop on my 2000 box.
> It looks like I have to have to have X started on the Linux box.
> Unfortunately, the poor old beast groans and thrashes under the pressure. As
> I'm poverty stricken I can't afford to replace the the beast.
>
> Anyone got a moment of genius that would give me a networked desktop without
> slugging old faithfull ?

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but I think you're asking
this:

You have a 200 MHz Pentium with 64 MB of memory, which runs a linux
OS. You also have a gruntier box with Windows 2000, and you would like
to run X applications on the linux box, but display the application's
windows on the W2k machine. You'd like to put as much of the
computational load on the W2k machine.

Is that right?

If so, I think the best thing you could do is install an X server on
your W2k box. One thing to realise is that the X server runs where the
application displays its windows, not where the application runs. You
would set your DISPLAY environment variable to point to your W2K X
server, and start up the application.

If you use a VNC server on your linux box, that would mean that that
machine, apart from running the application, would also need to do all
the display work (in the Xvnc process, which acts as an X server to
your application), as well as the VNC server (again, in the Xvnc
process, which acts as a VNC server to your VNC client).

You can get free X servers for windows (e.g. http://x.cygwin.com/).

Martien
--
|
Martien Verbruggen | Little girls, like butterflies, need no
Trading Post Australia | excuse - Lazarus Long
|

>>>>> "Ian" == Ian Northeast <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

Ian> You don't need to start any X server except VNC itself, which
Ian> is one, on the Linux box. In one application I have I run VNC
Ian> for the sole purpose of not having to have a physical X
Ian> server

In that case, you could have used Xvfb instead.


Ian> I don't think vncserver will make much of a dent in that
Ian> box. Most of the work is done in the viewer/browser.

No. The VNC viewer is a thin client. It does little, except
decompressing the bitmaps sent from the VNC server (and a few other
things). With Xvnc, the rendering of graphics (such as drawing a
bitmap in the framebuffer, filling a polygon) is done in the Xvnc
process. The other calculations (such as computing a spreadsheet) are
done in the machine runing the X-clients. The vncviewer does
relatively little things.


--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm- ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: (E-Mail Removed)
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Newey <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

Chris> Running X on the Linux box deafens my ears with the disk
Chris> thrashing. If VNC client on the 2000 box doesn't kill the
Chris> performance then I'll go that way - anyway I'll give it a
Chris> try.

Thrashing with 64MB of RAM?

I used to work on a 486 with only 16MB RAM, and I was developing
programs (or writing LaTeX documents) under Emacs under X11 using gcc
and LaTeX. The machine only thrashes slightly when I invoke gcc (and
make) to compile the programs. Other times, it was fast and
responsive.


Perhaps, you should forget about those memory-hog desktops such as KDE
and Gnome. Use a memory-efficient window manager instead
(e.g. fvwm2). That would make a big difference on a machine with only
64MB of RAM.



--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm- ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: (E-Mail Removed)
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

On Sat, 1 May 2004 15:34:32 +0100, Chris Newey <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Running X on the Linux box deafens my ears with the disk thrashing. If VNC
> client on the 2000 box doesn't kill the performance then I'll go that way -
> anyway I'll give it a try.

I'ved used X on a 486 with 32MB of RAM in both Red Hat 5 and OS/2, and in
both cases it was plenty fast. I used TWM, which is a pretty lean window
manager. I wouldn't want to think about running something like KDE or GNOME
on it, but TWM worked beautifully.

--
-- Skylar Thompson ((E-Mail Removed))
-- http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/