README 260 KB
Newer Older
1

2
x11vnc README file                         Date: Sun Mar 20 00:02:00 EST 2005
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

The following information is taken from these URLs:

	http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html
	http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html

they contain the most up to date info.

=======================================================================
http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html:

     _________________________________________________________________

16 17
x11vnc: a VNC server for real X displays   (to [1]FAQ)    (to [2]Downloads)
(to [3]Building)
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

   x11vnc allows one to remotely view and interact with real X displays
   (i.e. a display corresponding to a physical monitor, keyboard, and
   mouse) with any VNC viewer. In this way it plays the role for Unix/X11
   that WinVNC plays for Windows.

   I wrote x11vnc because x0rfbserver was basically impossible to build
   on Solaris and had poor performance. The primary x0rfbserver build
   problems centered around esoteric C++ toolkits. x11vnc is written in
   plain C and uses only standard libraries. I also added a few
   enhancements to improve the interactive response, add esoteric
29 30 31
   features, etc. The [4]FAQ contains a lot of information and solutions
   to problems, but please feel free to [5]contact me if you have
   problems or questions.
32 33 34

    Background:

35
   VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a very useful network graphics
36 37 38 39
   protocol (applications running on one computer but displaying their
   windows on another) in the spirit of X, however, unlike X, the
   viewing-end is very simple and maintains no state. It is a remote
   framebuffer (RFB) protocol
40 41

   Some VNC links:
42 43 44
     * [6]http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
     * [7]http://www.realvnc.com
     * [8]http://www.tightvnc.com
45 46 47

   For Unix, the VNC implementation includes a virtual X11 server Xvnc
   (usually launched via the vncserver command) that is not associated
48
   with a physical display, but provides a "fake" one X11 clients (xterm,
49 50 51 52 53
   mozilla, etc.) can attach to. A remote user then connects to Xvnc via
   the VNC client vncviewer from anywhere on the network to view and
   interact with the whole virtual X11 desktop.

   The VNC protocol is in most cases better suited for remote connections
54 55 56 57
   with low bandwidth and high latency than is the X11 protocol (the
   exception is cached pixmap data on the viewing-end). Also, with no
   state maintained the viewing-end can crash, be rebooted, or relocated
   and the applications and desktop continue running. Not so with X11.
58

59 60 61 62
   So the standard Xvnc/vncserver program is very useful, I use it for
   things like:
     * Desktop conferencing with other users (e.g. codereviews).
     * Long running apps/tasks I want to be able to view from many
63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77
       places.
     * Motif, GNOME, and similar applications that would yield very poor
       performance over a high latency link.

   However, sometimes one wants to connect to a real X11 display (i.e.
   one attached to a physical monitor, keyboard, and mouse: a Workstation
   or a SunRay session) from far away. Maybe you want to close down an
   application cleanly rather than using kill, or want to work a bit in
   an already running application, or would like to help a distant
   colleague solve a problem with their desktop. This is where x11vnc is
   useful.
     _________________________________________________________________

    How to use x11vnc:

78 79 80
   In this basic example let's assume the remote machine with the X
   display you wish to view is "far-away.east:0" and the workstation you
   are presently working at is "sitting-here.west".
81

82 83 84
   Step 0. Download x11vnc ([9]see below) and have it available to run on
   far-away.east. Similarly, have a VNC viewer (e.g. vncviewer) ready to
   run on sitting-here.west. We recommend [10]TightVNC Viewers.
85 86 87 88

   Step 1. By some means log in to far-away.east and get a command shell
   running there. You can use ssh, rlogin, telnet, or any other method to
   do this. x11vnc needs to be run on the same machine the X server
89
   process is running on (otherwise things would be extremely slow).
90 91

   Step 2. In that far-away.east shell (with command prompt "far-away>"
92 93
   in this example) run x11vnc directed at the far-away.east X session
   display:
94 95 96

  far-away> x11vnc -display :0

97 98
   You could have also set the environment variable DISPLAY=:0 instead of
   using -display. This step attaches x11vnc to the far-away.east:0 X
99 100
   display (no viewer clients yet).

101
   To get X11 permissions right, you may also need to set the XAUTHORITY
102 103 104
   environment variable (or use the [11]-auth option) to point to the
   correct MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE file (e.g. /home/joe/.Xauthority). More on
   this [12]below.
105

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120
   There will then be much chatter printed out from x11vnc, until it
   finally says something like:
  .
  .
  13/05/2004 14:59:54 Autoprobing selected port 5900
  13/05/2004 14:59:54 screen setup finished.
  13/05/2004 14:59:54 The VNC desktop is far-away:0
  PORT=5900

   which means all is OK, and we are ready for the final step.

   Step 3. At the place where you are sitting (sitting-here.west in this
   example) you now want to run a VNC viewer program. There are VNC
   viewers for Unix, Windows, MacOS, Java-enabled web browsers, and even
   for PDA's like the Palm Pilot! You can use any of them to connect to
121
   x11vnc (see the above VNC links under "Background:" on how to obtain a
122 123
   viewer for your platform or see [13]this FAQ. For Solaris, vncviewer
   is available in the [14]Companion CD package SFWvnc ).
124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

   In this example we'll use the Unix vncviewer program on sitting-here
   by typing the following command in a second terminal window:

  sitting-here> vncviewer far-away.east:0

   That should pop up a viewer window on sitting-here.west showing and
   allowing interaction with the far-away.east:0  X11 desktop. Pretty
   nifty! When finished, exit the viewer: the remote x11vnc process will
133
   shutdown automatically (or you can use the [15]-forever option to have
134 135
   it wait for additional viewer connections).

136 137 138 139 140
   Shortcut: Of course if you left x11vnc running on far-away.east:0 in a
   terminal window with the [16]-forever option or as a [17]service,
   you'd only have to do Step 3 as you moved around. Be sure to use a VNC
   [18]password or [19]other measures if you do that.

141

142
   Desktop Sharing: The above more or less assumed nobody was sitting at
143
   the workstation display "far-away.east:0". This is often the case: a
144
   user wants to access her workstation remotely. Another usage pattern
145 146 147
   has the user sitting at "far-away.east:0" and invites one or more
   other people to view and interact with his desktop. Perhaps the user
   gives a demo or presentation this way (using the telephone for vocal
148 149 150 151 152 153 154
   communication). A "Remote Help Desk" mode would be similar: a
   technician remotely connects to the user's desktop to interactively
   solve a problem the user is having.

   For these cases it should be obvious how it is done. The above steps
   will work, but more easily the user sitting at far-away.east:0 simply
   starts up x11vnc from a terminal window, after which the guests would
155
   start their VNC viewers. For this usage mode the "[20]-connect
156 157
   host1,host2" option may be of use automatically connect to vncviewers
   in "-listen" mode on the list of hosts.
158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170
     _________________________________________________________________

    Tunnelling x11vnc via ssh:

   The above example had no security or privacy at all. When logging into
   remote machines (certainly when going over the internet) it is best to
   use ssh, or use a VPN. For x11vnc one can tunnel the VNC protocol
   through the encrypted ssh channel. It would look something like this:
  sitting-here> ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 far-away.east 'x11vnc -display :0'

   (you will likely have to provide passwords/passphrases for the ssh
   login) and then in another terminal window on sitting-here run the
   command:
171
  sitting-here> vncviewer -encodings "copyrect tight zrle hextile" localhost:0
172 173 174 175 176 177 178

   The -encodings option is very important: vncviewer will default to
   "raw" encoding if it thinks the connection is to the local machine,
   and so vncviewer gets tricked this way by the ssh redirection. "raw"
   encoding will be extremely slow over a networked link, so you need to
   force the issue with -encodings "copyrect tight ...".

179 180 181
   Some VNC viewers will do the ssh tunnelling for you automatically, the
   TightVNC vncviewer does this when the "-via far-away.east" option is
   supplied to it (this requires x11vnc to be already running on
182 183
   far-away.east or having it started by [21]inetd(1)). See the 3rd
   script example [22]below for more info.
184

185 186
   If the machine you SSH into is not the same machine with the X display
   you wish to view (e.g. your company provides incoming SSH access to a
187 188
   gateway machine), then you need to change the above to, e.g.: "-L
   5900:otherhost:5900". Once logged in, you'll need to do a second login
189
   (ssh, rsh, etc.) to the workstation machine 'otherhost' and then start
190 191
   up x11vnc on it if it isn't already running.

192
     _________________________________________________________________
193

194 195 196
   Scripts to automate ssh tunneling: As discussed below, there may be
   some problems with port 5900 being available. If that happens, the
   above port and display numbers may change a bit (e.g. -> 5901 and :1).
197 198
   However, if you "know" port 5900 will be free on the local and remote
   machines, you can easily automate the above two steps by using the
199 200 201 202
   x11vnc option [23]-bg (forks into background after connection to the
   display is set up) or using the -f option of ssh. Three example
   scripts are shown below.
     _________________________________________________________________
203

204
   #1. A simple example script, assuming no problems with port 5900 being
205
   taken on the local or remote sides, looks like:
206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213
#!/bin/sh
# usage: x11vnc_ssh <host>:<xdisplay>
#  e.g.: x11vnc_ssh snoopy.peanuts.com:0

host=`echo $1 | awk -F: '{print $1}'`
disp=`echo $1 | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
if [ "x$disp" = "x" ]; then disp=0; fi

214 215
cmd="x11vnc -display :$disp -localhost -rfbauth .vnc/passwd"
enc="copyrect tight zrle hextile zlib corre rre raw"
216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225

ssh -f -L 5900:localhost:5900 $host "$cmd"

for i in 1 2 3
do
        sleep 2
        if vncviewer -encodings "$enc" :0; then break; fi
done

   See also rx11vnc.pl below.
226
     _________________________________________________________________
227

228 229 230
   #2. Another method is to start the VNC viewer in listen mode
   "vncviewer -listen" and have x11vnc initiate a reverse connection
   using the [24]-connect option:
231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238
#!/bin/sh
# usage: x11vnc_ssh <host>:<xdisplay>
#  e.g.: x11vnc_ssh snoopy.peanuts.com:0

host=`echo $1 | awk -F: '{print $1}'`
disp=`echo $1 | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
if [ "x$disp" = "x" ]; then disp=0; fi

239
cmd="x11vnc -display :$disp -localhost -connect localhost"   # <== note new opt
240 241
ion
enc="copyrect tight zrle hextile zlib corre rre raw"
242 243 244 245 246

vncviewer -encodings "$enc" -listen &
pid=$!
ssh -R 5500:localhost:5500 $host "$cmd"
kill $pid
247 248 249

   Note the use of the ssh option -R instead of -L to set up a remote
   port redirection.
250
     _________________________________________________________________
251

252 253 254 255 256
   #3. A third way is specific to the TightVNC vncviewer special option
   -via for gateways. The only tricky part is we need to start up x11vnc
   and give it some time (5 seconds in this example) to start listening
   for connections (so we cannot use the TightVNC default setting for
   VNC_VIA_CMD):
257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264
#!/bin/sh
# usage: x11vnc_ssh <host>:<xdisplay>
#  e.g.: x11vnc_ssh snoopy.peanuts.com:0

host=`echo $1 | awk -F: '{print $1}'`
disp=`echo $1 | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
if [ "x$disp" = "x" ]; then disp=0; fi

265 266
VNC_VIA_CMD="ssh -f -L %L:%H:%R %G x11vnc -localhost -rfbport 5900 -display :$d
isp; sleep 5"
267 268 269 270 271
export VNC_VIA_CMD

vncviewer -via $host localhost:0      # must be TightVNC vncviewer.

   Of course if you already have the x11vnc running waiting for
272
   connections (or have it started out of [25]inetd(1)), you can simply
273 274 275
   use the TightVNC "vncviewer -via gateway host:port" in its default
   mode to provide secure ssh tunnelling.

276

277 278
   VNC password file: Also note in the #1. example script that the
   [26]option "-rfbauth .vnc/passwd" provides additional protection by
279
   requiring a VNC password for every VNC viewer that connects. The
280
   vncpasswd or storepasswd programs, or the x11vnc [27]-storepasswd
281
   option can be used to create the password file. x11vnc also has the
282 283
   slightly less secure [28]-passwdfile and "-passwd XXXXX" [29]options
   to specify passwords.
284 285

   Important: It is up to you to tell x11vnc to use password protection,
286 287 288 289 290
   it will not do it for you automatically or force you to. The same goes
   for encrypting the channel between the viewer and x11vnc: it is up to
   you to use ssh, stunnel, VPN, etc. Also look into the -allow and
   -localhost [30]options and building x11vnc with [31]tcp_wrappers
   support to limit host access.
291 292 293 294
     _________________________________________________________________

    Downloading x11vnc:

295
   x11vnc is a contributed program to the [32]LibVNCServer project at
296 297 298
   SourceForge.net. I use libvncserver for all of the VNC aspects; I
   couldn't have done without it. The full source code may be found and
   downloaded (either file-release tarball or CVS tree) from the above
runge's avatar
runge committed
299 300
   link. As of Feb 2005, the [33]x11vnc-0.7.1.tar.gz source package is
   released (recommended download) . The [34]x11vnc 0.7.1 release notes.
301

302
   The x11vnc package is the subset of the libvncserver package needed to
303
   build the x11vnc program. Also, you can get a copy of my latest,
304
   bleeding edge [35]x11vnc.c file to replace the one in the above
305
   packages or the one in the CVS tree and then rebuild. You can also
306
   update the tcl/tk gui with the [36]tkx11vnc.h file. If you have an
307
   older libvncserver source tree, you may need to switch on the OLD_TREE
308
   variable near the top of the x11vnc.c file.
309

310
   See the [37]FAQ below for information about where you might obtain a
311 312
   precompiled x11vnc binary from 3rd parties.

313
   To obtain VNC viewers for the viewing side (Windows, Mac OS, or Unix)
314 315 316 317 318
   try these links:
     * [38]http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html
     * [39]http://www.realvnc.com/download-free.html
     * [40]http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

319

320 321 322
   More tools: Here is a rsh/ssh wrapper script rx11vnc that attempts to
   automatically do the above Steps 1-3 for you (provided you have
   rsh/ssh login permission on the machine x11vnc is to be run on). The
323 324 325
   above example would be: "rx11vnc far-away.east:0" typed into a shell
   on sitting-here.west. Also included is an experimental script
   rx11vnc.pl that attempts to tunnel the vnc traffic through an ssh port
326 327
   redirection (and does not assume port 5900 is free). Have a look at
   them to see what they do and customize as needed:
328 329 330
     * [41]rx11vnc wrapper script
     * [42]rx11vnc.pl wrapper script to tunnel traffic thru ssh

331 332 333 334 335
     _________________________________________________________________

    Building x11vnc:

   If your OS has libjpeg.so and libz.so in standard locations you can
runge's avatar
runge committed
336 337
   build as follows (example given for the 0.7.1 release of x11vnc:
   replace with the version you downloaded):
338
(un-tar the x11vnc+libvncserver tarball)
runge's avatar
runge committed
339
# gzip -dc x11vnc-0.7.1.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
340 341

(cd to the source directory)
runge's avatar
runge committed
342
# cd x11vnc-0.7.1
343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355

(run configure and then run make)
# ./configure
# make

(if all went OK, copy x11vnc to the desired destination, e.g. $HOME/bin)
# cp ./x11vnc/x11vnc $HOME/bin

   Or do make install, it will probably install to /usr/local/bin (run
   ./configure --help for information on customizing your configuration).
   You can now run it via typing "x11vnc", "x11vnc -help", "x11vnc -nap
   -display :0", etc.

356 357
   Note: Currently gcc is required to build libvncserver. In some cases
   it will build with non-gcc compilers, but the resulting binary often
358
   fails to run properly. For Solaris pre-built gcc binaries are at
359 360
   [43]http://www.sunfreeware.com/   However, one user reports it does
   work fine when built with Sun Studio 10, so YMMV.
361 362

     _________________________________________________________________
363

364 365 366
   Building on Solaris, FreeBSD, etc:   Depending on your version of
   Solaris or other Unix OS the jpeg and/or zlib libraries may be in
   non-standard places (e.g. /usr/local, /usr/sfw, /opt/sfw, etc).
367

368
   Note: If configure cannot find these two libraries then TightVNC and
369
   ZRLE encoding support will be disabled, and you don't want that! The
370
   TightVNC encoding gives very good compression and performance, it even
371 372
   makes a noticeable difference over a fast LAN.

373

374 375 376
   Shortcuts: On Solaris 10 you can pick up almost everything just by
   insuring that your PATH has /usr/sfw/bin (for gcc) and /usr/ccs/bin
   (for other build tools), e.g.:
377 378
  env PATH=/usr/sfw/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:$PATH sh -c './configure; make'

379 380 381
   (The only thing this misses is /usr/X11/lib/libXrandr.so.2, which is
   for the little used -xrandr option, see the script below to pick it up
   as well).
382

383 384
   libjpeg is included in Solaris 9 and later (/usr/sfw/include and
   /usr/sfw/lib), and zlib in Solaris 8 and later (/usr/include and
385 386
   /usr/lib). So on Solaris 9 you can pick up everything with something
   like this:
387 388 389
  env PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:$PATH CPPFLAGS='-I /usr/sfw/include' LDF
LAGS='-L/usr/sfw/lib -R/usr/sfw/lib' sh -c './configure; make'

390 391 392 393 394 395 396
   assuming your gcc is in /usr/local/bin. Or starting with the 0.7.1
   x11vnc release:
  env PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:$PATH sh -c './configure --with-jpeg=/us
r/sfw; make'

   These are getting pretty long, see those assignments split up in the
   build script below.
397

398 399 400 401 402 403

   If your system does not have these libraries at all you can get the
   source for the libraries to build them: libjpeg is available at
   [44]ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/ and zlib at
   [45]http://www.gzip.org/zlib/. See also
   [46]http://www.sunfreeware.com/ for Solaris binary packages of these
404
   libraries as well as for gcc. Normally they will install into
runge's avatar
runge committed
405 406
   /usr/local but you can install them anywhere with the
   --prefix=/path/to/anywhere, etc.
407

408

409
   Here is a build script that indicates one way to pass the library
410
   locations information to the libvncserver configuration via the
411
   CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS environmental variables.
412 413
#!/bin/sh

414
# Build script for Solaris, etc, with gcc, libjpeg and libz in
415 416
# non-standard locations.

417
# set to get your gcc, etc:
418
#
419
PATH=/path/to/gcc/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:$PATH
420

421 422
JPEG=/path/to/jpeg      # set to maybe "/usr/local", "/usr/sfw", or "/opt/sfw"
ZLIB=/path/to/zlib      # set to maybe "/usr/local", "/usr/sfw", or "/opt/sfw"
423 424 425 426

# Below we assume headers in $JPEG/include and $ZLIB/include and the
# shared libraries are in $JPEG/lib and $ZLIB/lib.  If your situation
# is different change the locations in the two lines below.
427
#
428 429 430 431
CPPFLAGS="-I $JPEG/include -I $ZLIB/include"
LDFLAGS="-L $JPEG/lib -R $JPEG/lib -L $ZLIB/lib -R $ZLIB/lib"

# These two lines may not be needed on more recent Solaris releases:
432
#
433 434 435
CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS -I /usr/openwin/include"
LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -L /usr/openwin/lib -R /usr/openwin/lib"

436
# These are for libXrandr.so on Solaris 10:
437
#
438 439 440
CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS -I /usr/X11/include"
LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -L /usr/X11/lib -R /usr/X11/lib"

441
# Everything needs to built with _REENTRANT for thread safe errno:
442
#
443 444
CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS -D_REENTRANT"

445 446 447 448 449 450 451
export PATH CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS

./configure
make

ls -l ./x11vnc/x11vnc

452 453 454 455 456 457
   Then do make install or copy the x11vnc binary to your desired
   destination.

   BTW, To run a shell script, just cut-and-paste the above into a file,
   say "myscript", then modify the "/path/to/..." items to correspond to
   your system/environment, and then type: "sh myscript" to run it.
458 459

   Note that on Solaris make is /usr/ccs/bin/make, so that is why the
460
   above puts /usr/ccs/bin in PATH. Other important build utilities are
461 462 463
   there too: ld, ar, etc. Also, it is probably a bad idea to have
   /usr/ucb in your PATH while building.

464 465 466 467
   Starting with the 0.7.1 x11vnc release the "configure --with-jpeg=DIR
   --with-zlib=DIR" options are handy if you want to avoid making a
   script.

468 469 470 471 472 473
   One user had a problem where the above build script was failing
   because his work environment had the ENV variable set to a script that
   was resetting his PATH so that gcc could no longer be found. Make sure
   you do not have any ENV or BASH_ENV in your environment doing things
   like that.

474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482
   If you need to build on Solaris 2.5.1 or earlier or other older Unix
   OS's, see [47]this workaround FAQ.

   Building on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, ...:   The jpeg libraries seem to be in
   /usr/local or /usr/pkg on these OS's. You won't need the openwin stuff
   in the above script (but you may need /usr/X11R6/...). Also starting
   with the 0.7.1 x11vnc release, this usually works:
  ./configure --with-jpeg=/usr/local
  make
483 484 485

   Building on HP-UX:   For jpeg and zlib you will need to do the same
   sort of thing as described above for Solaris. You set CPPFLAGS and
runge's avatar
runge committed
486 487 488 489 490 491 492
   LDFLAGS to find them (see below for an example). You do not need to do
   any of the above /usr/openwin stuff. Also, HP-UX does not seem to
   support -R, so get rid of the -R items in LDFLAGS. Because of this, at
   runtime you may need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH or SHLIB_PATH to indicate
   the directory paths so the libraries can be found. It is a good idea
   to have static archives, e.g. libz.a and libjpeg.a for the nonstandard
   libraries so that they get bolted into the x11vnc binary.
493 494 495 496

   Finally, there seems to be a bug with gcc on HP-UX 11.xx: something
   fails (in the gcc private header files?) and it thinks it cannot find
   gettimeofday(). As a workaround add this to CPPFLAGS:
497
   -DLIBVNCSERVER_HAVE_GETTIMEOFDAY=1. You may get some warnings but we
498 499
   have verified that this generates working x11vnc binaries on HP-UX
   hppa and ia64.
runge's avatar
runge committed
500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508

   Here is what we recently did to build x11vnc 0.7.1 on HP-UX 11.11
env CPPFLAGS="-DLIBVNCSERVER_HAVE_GETTIMEOFDAY=1 -I $HOME/hpux/jpeg/include -I
$HOME/hpux/zlib/include" LDFLAGS="-L $HOME/hpux/jpeg/lib -L $HOME/hpux/zlib/lib
" ./configure
make

   Where we had static archives (libjpeg.a, libz.a) only in the
   $HOME/hpux/... directories.
509 510 511 512 513 514 515 516
     _________________________________________________________________

    Some Notes:

   Network performance:   Whether you are using Xvnc or x11vnc it is
   always a good idea to have a solid background color instead of a
   pretty background image. Each and every re-exposure of the background
   must be resent over the network: better to have that background be a
517 518 519 520 521
   solid color that compresses very well compared to a photo image. (This
   is one place where the X protocol has an advantage over the VNC
   protocol.) I suggest using xsetroot, dtstyle or similar utility to set
   a solid background while using x11vnc. You can turn the pretty
   background image back on when you are using the display directly.
522 523 524
   Update: As of Feb/2005 in the libvncserver CVS, x11vnc has the
   [48]-solid [color] option that works on recent GNOME, KDE, and CDE and
   also on classic X (background image is on the root window).
525

526
   I also find the [49]TightVNC encoding gives the best response for my
527 528 529 530 531 532 533 534 535 536 537
   usage (Unix <-> Unix over cable modem). One needs a tightvnc-aware
   vncviewer to take advantage of this encoding.

   TCP port issues:   Notice the lines
  18/07/2003 14:36:31 Autoprobing selected port 5900
  PORT=5900

   in the output. 5900 is the default VNC listening port (just like 6000
   is X11's default listening port). Had port 5900 been taken by some
   other application, x11vnc would have next tried 5901. That would mean
   the viewer command above should be changed to vncviewer
538 539 540 541
   far-away.east:1. You can force the issue with the "[50]-rfbport NNNN"
   option where NNNN is the desired port number. If that port is already
   taken, x11vnc will exit immediately.   (also see the "SunRay Gotcha"
   note below)
542 543

   Options:   x11vnc has (far too) many features that may be activated
544
   via its [51]command line options. Useful options are -nap to use fewer
545 546
   resources (it sleeps more between polls when activity is low) and
   -rfbauth passwd-file to use VNC password protection (the vncpasswd or
547
   storepasswd programs, or the x11vnc [52]-storepasswd option can be
548 549 550 551 552 553 554 555 556
   used to create the password file).

   Algorithm:   How does x11vnc do it? Rather brute-forcedly: it
   continuously polls the X11 framebuffer for changes using
   XShmGetImage(). When changes are discovered, it instructs libvncserver
   which rectangular regions of the framebuffer have changed, and
   libvncserver compresses the changes and sends them off to any
   connected VNC viewers. A number of applications do similar things,
   such as x0rfbserver, krfb, x0vncserver. x11vnc uses a 32 x 32 pixel
557 558
   tile model (the desktop is decomposed into roughly 1000 such tiles),
   where changed tiles are found by pseudo-randomly polling 1 pixel tall
559 560 561
   horizontal scanlines. This is a surprisingly effective algorithm for
   finding changed regions. For keyboard and mouse user input the XTEST
   extension is used to pass the input events to the X server. To detect
562 563
   XBell "beeps" the XKEYBOARD extension is used. If available, the
   XFIXES extension is used to retrieve the current mouse cursor shape.
564 565 566 567
   Also, if available the X DAMAGE extension is used to receive hints
   from the X server where modified regions on the screen are. This
   greatly reduces the system load when not much is changing on the
   screen and also improves how quickly the screen is updated.
568 569 570 571 572 573 574

   Barbershop mirrors effect:   What if x11vnc is started up, and
   vncviewer is then started up on the same machine and displayed on the
   same display x11vnc is polling? One might "accidentally" do this when
   first testing out the programs. You get an interesting "feedback"
   effect where vncviewer images keep popping up each one contained in
   the previous one and slightly shifted a bit by the window manager
575
   decorations. There will be an [53]even more interesting effect if
576 577 578 579
   -scale is used. Also, if the XKEYBOARD is supported and the XBell
   "beeps" once, you get an infinite loop of beeps going off. Although
   all of this is mildly exciting it is not much use: you will normally
   run and display the viewer on a different machine!
580 581

   SunRay notes:   You can run x11vnc on your (connected or disconnected)
582 583 584
   [54]SunRay session (Please remember to use [55]-nap and maybe
   [56]-wait 200 to avoid being a resource hog! It also helps to have a
   solid background color). You have to know the name of the machine your
585 586 587 588 589 590 591 592 593
   SunRay session X server is running on. You also need to know the X11
   DISPLAY number for the session: on a SunRay it could be a large
   number, e.g. :137, since there are many people with X sessions (Xsun
   processes) on the same machine. If you don't know it, you can get it
   by running who(1) in a shell on the SunRay server and looking for the
   dtlocal entry with your username (and if you don't even know which
   server machine has your session, you could login to all possible ones
   looking at the who output for your username...).

594 595 596 597 598
   I put some code in my ~/.xsession script that stores $DISPLAY in my
   ~/.sunray_current file at session startup and deletes it when the
   session ends to make it easy to get at the hostname and X11 display
   number info for my current X sessions.

599
   SunRay Gotcha #1:   Note that even though your SunRay X11 DISPLAY is
600
   something like :137, x11vnc still tries for port 5900 as its listening
601 602 603 604 605
   port if it can get it, in which case the VNC display (i.e. the
   information you supply to the VNC viewer) is something like
   sunray-server:0   (note the :0 corresponding to port 5900, it is not
   :137). If it cannot get 5900, it tries for 5901, and so on. You can
   also try to force the port (and thereby the VNC display) using the
606 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623
   [57]-rfbport NNNN option.

   SunRay Gotcha #2:   If you get an error like:
        shmget(tile) failed.
        shmget: No space left on device

   when starting up x11vnc that most likely means all the shared memory
   (shm) slots are filled up on your machine. The Solaris default is only
   100, and that can get filled up in a week or so on a SunRay server
   with lots of users. If the shm slot is orphaned (e.g. creator process
   dies) the slot is not reclaimed. You can view the shm slots with the
   "ipcs -mA" command. If there are about 100 then you've probably hit
   this problem. They can be cleaned out (by the owner or by root) using
   the ipcrm command. I wrote a script [58]shm_clear that finds the
   orphans and lists or removes them. Longer term, have your SunRay
   sysadmin add something like this to /etc/system:
        set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax = 0x2000000
        set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni = 0x1000
624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637

    Limitations:

     * Due to the polling nature, some activities (opaque window moves,
       scrolling), can be pretty choppy/ragged and others (exposures of
       large areas) slow. Experiment with interacting a bit differently
       than you normally do to minimize the effects (e.g. do fullpage
       paging rather than line-by-line scrolling, and move windows in a
       single, quick motion). Work is in progress to attempt to speed
       things up using the copyrect encoding and other things, but they
       will likely only speed up certain activities, not all.
     * A rate limiting factor for x11vnc performance is that video
       hardware is optimized for writing, not reading (x11vnc reads the
       video framebuffer for the screen image data). The difference can
638 639 640
       be a factor of 10 to 1000, and so it usually takes about 0.5-1 sec
       to read in the whole video hardware framebuffer (e.g. 5MB for
       1280x1024 at depth 24). So whenever activity changes most of the
641 642
       screen (e.g. moving or iconifying a large window) there is a delay
       of 0.5-1 sec while x11vnc reads the changed regions in.
643 644 645 646
       To get a sense of the read and write speeds of your video card,
       you can run the benchmarks like: x11perf -getimage500,  x11perf
       -putimage500,  x11perf -shmput500 and for XFree86 displays with
       direct graphics access the dga command (press "b" to run the
647 648
       benchmark and then after a few seconds press "q" to quit).
       On XFree86 it is actually possible to increase the framebuffer
649
       read speed considerably (5-100 times) by using the Shadow
650 651 652 653 654 655 656
       Framebuffer (a copy of the framebuffer is kept in main memory and
       this can be read much more quickly). To do this one puts the line
       Option "ShadowFB" "true" (and depending on video card driver,
       Option "NoAccel" "true" may be needed too) in the Device section
       of the /etc/X11/XF86Config file. Note that this disables 2D
       acceleration at the physical display and so likely defeats the
       purpose. Nevertheless this could be handy in some circumstances,
657 658 659 660
       e.g. if the slower speed while sitting at the physical display was
       acceptable (this seems to be true for most video cards these
       days). Unfortunately it does not seem shadowfb can be turned on
       and off dynamically...
661 662 663 664 665 666 667
       Another amusing thing one can do is use Xvfb as the X server, e.g.
       "xinit $HOME/.xinitrc -- /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvfb :1 -screen 0
       1024x768x16" x11vnc can poll Xvfb efficiently via main memory.
       It's not exactly clear why one would want to do this (perhaps to
       take advantage of an x11vnc feature, such as framebuffer scaling),
       instead of using vncserver/Xvnc, but we mention it because it may
       be of use for special purpose applications.
668 669
     * Somewhat surprisingly, the X11 mouse (cursor) shape is write-only
       and cannot be queried from the X server. So in x11vnc the cursor
670
       shape stays fixed at an arrow. (see the "-cursor X" and "-cursor
671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679
       some" [59]options, however, for a partial hack for the root
       window, etc.). Also, on Solaris using the SUN_OVL overlay
       extension, x11vnc can show the correct mouse cursor when the
       [60]-overlay option is also supplied. A similar thing is done on
       IRIX as well when -overlay is supplied. As of Dec/2004 x11vnc
       supports the XFIXES extension (in Xorg and Solaris 10) to query
       the X server for the exact cursor shape, this works pretty well
       except that cursors with transparency (alpha channel) need to
       approximated to solid RGB values.
680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688
     * Audio from applications is of course not redirected (separate
       redirectors do exist, e.g. esd). The XBell() "beeps" will work if
       the X server supports the XKEYBOARD extension. (Note that on
       Solaris XKEYBOARD is disabled by default. Passing +kb to Xsun
       enables it).
     * Occasionally a patch of tiles will not get updated correctly.
       Evidently a timing related bug and difficult to reproduce...
     * Using -threads can expose some bugs in libvncserver.

689
   Please feel free to [61]contact me if you have any questions,
690
   problems, or comments about x11vnc, etc.
runge's avatar
runge committed
691 692
   Also, some people ask if they can make a donation, see [62]this link
   for that.
693 694 695 696 697
     _________________________________________________________________

    x11vnc FAQ:


698
   [Building and Starting]
699

runge's avatar
runge committed
700
   [63]Q-1: I can't get x11vnc to start up. It says "XOpenDisplay failed
701 702 703
   (null)" or "Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server" and then
   exits. What do I need to do? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
704
   [64]Q-2: I can't get x11vnc and/or libvncserver to compile. 
705

706 707
   [65]Q-3: Help, I need to run x11vnc on Solaris 2.5.1 (or other old
   Unix/Linux) and it doesn't compile! 
708

runge's avatar
runge committed
709
   [66]Q-4: Where can I get a precompiled x11vnc binary for my Operating
710 711
   System? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
712
   [67]Q-5: Where can I get a VNC Viewer binary (or source code) for the
713 714
   Operating System I will be viewing from? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
715
   [68]Q-6: How can I see all of x11vnc's command line options and
716 717
   documentation on how to use them? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
718
   [69]Q-7: I don't like typing arcane command line options every time I
719
   start x11vnc. What can I do? Is there a config file? Or a GUI? 
720

runge's avatar
runge committed
721
   [70]Q-8: Can I make x11vnc more quiet and also go into the background
722 723
   after starting up? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
724
   [71]Q-9: Sometimes when a VNC viewer dies abruptly, x11vnc also dies
725 726
   with the error message like: "Broken pipe". I'm using the -forever
   mode and I want x11vnc to keep running. 
727

728 729
   [Win2VNC Related]

runge's avatar
runge committed
730
   [72]Q-10: I have two separate machine displays in front of me, one
731 732 733 734
   Windows the other X11: can I use x11vnc in combination with Win2VNC in
   dual-screen mode to pass the keystrokes and mouse motions to the X11
   display? 

735 736 737
   [73]Q-11: I am running Win2VNC on my Windows machine and "x11vnc
   -nofb" on Unix to pass keyboard and mouse to the Unix monitor.
   Whenever I start Win2VNC it quickly disconnects and x11vnc says:
738
   rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: read: Connection reset by peer 
739

740 741
   [Color Issues]

runge's avatar
runge committed
742
   [74]Q-12: The X display I run x11vnc on is only 8 bits per pixel (bpp)
743
   PseudoColor (i.e. only 256 distinct colors). The x11vnc colors may
744 745
   start out OK, but after a while they are incorrect in certain windows.
   
runge's avatar
runge committed
746
   [75]Q-13: Color problems: Why are the colors for some windows messed
747 748 749
   up in x11vnc? BTW, my X display has nice overlay/multi-depth visuals
   of different color depths: e.g. there are both depth 8 and 24 visuals
   available at the same time. 
750

runge's avatar
runge committed
751
   [76]Q-14: How do I figure out the window id to supply to the -id
752 753
   windowid option? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
754
   [77]Q-15: Why don't menus or other transient windows come up when I am
755 756
   using the -id windowid option to view a single application window? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
757
   [78]Q-16: My X display is depth 24 at 24bpp (instead of the normal
758
   depth 24 at 32bpp). I'm having lots of color and visual problems with
runge's avatar
runge committed
759
   x11vnc and/or vncviewer. What's up? 
760 761 762

   [Xterminals]

runge's avatar
runge committed
763
   [79]Q-17: Can I use x11vnc to view and interact with an Xterminal
764 765 766
   (e.g. NCD) that is not running UNIX and so x11vnc cannot be run on it
   directly? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
767
   [80]Q-18: How do I get my X permissions (MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE) correct for
768
   a Unix/Linux machine acting as an Xterminal? 
769

770
   [Remote Control]
771

runge's avatar
runge committed
772
   [81]Q-19: How do I stop x11vnc once it is running in the background? 
773

runge's avatar
runge committed
774
   [82]Q-20: Can I change settings in x11vnc without having to restart
775
   it? Can I remote control it? 
776

777 778
   [Security and Permissions]

runge's avatar
runge committed
779
   [83]Q-21: How do I create a VNC password for use with x11vnc? 
780

runge's avatar
runge committed
781
   [84]Q-22: Can I have two passwords for VNC viewers, one for full
782 783
   access and the other for view-only access to the display? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
784
   [85]Q-23: Can I fine tune what types of user input are allowed? E.g.
785 786 787
   have some users just be able to move the mouse, but not click or type
   anything? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
788
   [86]Q-24: Why does x11vnc exit as soon as the VNC viewer disconnects?
789 790 791
   And why doesn't it allow more than one VNC viewer to connect at the
   same time? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
792
   [87]Q-25: Can I limit which machines incoming VNC clients can connect
793 794
   from? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
795
   [88]Q-26: How do I build x11vnc/libvncserver with libwrap
796 797
   (tcp_wrappers) support? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
798 799 800 801 802
   [89]Q-27: Can I have x11vnc only listen on one network interface (e.g.
   internal LAN) rather than having it listen on all network interfaces
   and relying on -allow to filter unwanted connections out? 

   [90]Q-28: Now that -localhost implies listening only on the loopback
803
   interface, how I can occasionally allow in a non-localhost via the
runge's avatar
runge committed
804 805 806
   allowonce remote control command? 

   [91]Q-29: How can I tunnel my connection to x11vnc via an encrypted
807 808
   SSH channel between two Unix machines? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
809
   [92]Q-30: How can I tunnel my connection to x11vnc via an encrypted
810 811
   SSH channel from Windows using an SSH client like Putty? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
812
   [93]Q-31: Can I prompt the user at the local X display whether the
813 814 815 816
   incoming VNC client should be accepted or not? Can I decide to make
   some clients view-only? How about running an arbitrary program to make
   the decisions? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
817
   [94]Q-32: Does x11vnc support Unix usernames and passwords? Can I
818 819 820
   further limit the set of Unix usernames who can connect to the VNC
   desktop? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
821
   [95]Q-33: I start x11vnc as root because it is launched via inetd(1)
822 823
   or a display manager like gdm(1). Can I have x11vnc later switch to a
   different user? 
824

runge's avatar
runge committed
825
   [96]Q-34: I use a screen-lock when I leave my workstation (e.g.
826 827 828 829 830
   xscreensaver or xlock). When I remotely access my workstation desktop
   via x11vnc I can unlock the desktop fine, but I am worried people will
   see my activities on the physical monitor. What can I do to prevent
   this, or at least make it more difficult? 

runge's avatar
runge committed
831
   [97]Q-35: Can I have x11vnc automatically lock the screen when I
832 833
   disconnect the VNC viewer? 

834 835
   [Display Managers and Services]

runge's avatar
runge committed
836
   [98]Q-36: How can I run x11vnc as a "service" that is always
837
   available? 
838

runge's avatar
runge committed
839
   [99]Q-37: How can I use x11vnc to connect to an X login screen like
840 841
   xdm, GNOME gdm, KDE kdm, or CDE dtlogin? (i.e. nobody is logged into
   an X session yet). 
842

runge's avatar
runge committed
843
   [100]Q-38: Can I run x11vnc out of inetd(1)? How about xinetd(1)? 
844

runge's avatar
runge committed
845 846
   [101]Q-39: How do I make x11vnc work with the Java VNC viewer applet
   in a web browser? 
847

runge's avatar
runge committed
848
   [102]Q-40: Are reverse connections (i.e. the VNC server connecting to
849 850
   the VNC viewer) using "vncviewer -listen" and vncconnect(1) supported?
   
851 852 853
   [103]Q-41: Can I use x11vnc as a replacement for Xvnc? (i.e. not for a
   real display, but for a virtual one I keep around). 

854 855
   [Resource Usage and Performance]

856
   [104]Q-42: I have lots of memory, but why does x11vnc fail with
857 858 859
   shmget: No space left on device    or    Minor opcode of failed
   request: 1 (X_ShmAttach)? 

860
   [105]Q-43: How can I make x11vnc use less system resources? 
861

862
   [106]Q-44: How can I make x11vnc use MORE system resources? 
863

864
   [107]Q-45: I use x11vnc over a slow link with high latency (e.g.
865
   dialup modem), is there anything I can do to speed things up? 
866

867
   [108]Q-46: When I drag windows around with the mouse or scroll up and
868 869 870
   down things really bog down (unless I do the drag in a single, quick
   motion). Is there anything to do to improve things? 

871
   [109]Q-47: Does x11vnc support the X DAMAGE Xserver extension to find
872 873
   modified regions of the screen quickly and efficiently? 

874 875
   [Mouse Cursor Shapes]

876
   [110]Q-48: Why isn't the mouse cursor shape (the little icon shape
877 878
   where the mouse pointer is) correct as I move from window to window? 

879
   [111]Q-49: When using XFIXES cursorshape mode, some of the cursors
880 881
   look really bad with extra black borders around the cursor and other
   cruft. How can I improve their appearance? 
882

883
   [112]Q-50: In XFIXES mode, are there any hacks to handle cursor
884 885 886 887
   transparency ("alpha channel") exactly? 

   [Mouse Pointer]

888
   [113]Q-51: Why does the mouse arrow just stay in one corner in my
889 890
   vncviewer, whereas my cursor (that does move) is just a dot? 

891
   [114]Q-52: Can I take advantage of the TightVNC extension to the VNC
892 893 894 895
   protocol where Cursor Positions Updates are sent back to all connected
   clients (i.e. passive viewers can see the mouse cursor being moved
   around by another viewer)? 

896
   [115]Q-53: Is it possible to swap the mouse buttons (e.g. left-handed
897 898 899
   operation), or arbitrarily remap them? How about mapping button clicks
   to keystrokes, e.g. to partially emulate Mouse wheel scrolling? 

900
   [Keyboard Issues]
901

902
   [116]Q-54: How can I get my AltGr and Shift modifiers to work between
903 904
   keyboards for different languages? 

905
   [117]Q-55: When I try to type a "<" (i.e. less than) instead I get ">"
906 907
   (i.e. greater than)! Strangely, typing ">" works OK!! 

908
   [118]Q-56: I'm using an "international" keyboard (e.g. German "de", or
909
   Danish "dk") and the -modtweak mode works well if the VNC viewer is
910 911 912 913
   run on a Unix/Linux machine with a similar keyboard.   But if I run
   the VNC viewer on Unix/Linux with a different keyboard (e.g. "us") or
   Windows with any keyboard, I can't type some keys like:   "@", "$",
   "<", ">", etc. How can I fix this? 
914

915
   [119]Q-57: When typing I sometimes get double, triple, or more of my
916 917
   keystrokes repeated. I'm sure I only typed them once, what can I do? 

918
   [120]Q-58: The x11vnc -norepeat mode is in effect, but I still get
919 920
   repeated keystrokes!! 

921
   [121]Q-59: The machine where I run x11vnc has an AltGr key, but the
922 923 924 925
   local machine where I run the VNC viewer does not. Is there a way I
   can map a local unused key to send an AltGr? How about a Compose key
   as well? 

926
   [122]Q-60: I have a Sun machine I run x11vnc on. Its Sun keyboard has
927 928 929 930
   just one Alt key labelled "Alt" and two Meta keys labelled with little
   diamonds. The machine where I run the VNC viewer only has Alt keys.
   How can I send a Meta keypress? (e.g. emacs needs this) 

931
   [123]Q-61: Can I map a keystroke to a mouse button click on the remote
932 933
   machine? 

934 935
   [Screen Related Issues and Features]

936
   [124]Q-62: The remote display is larger (in number of pixels) than the
937 938 939
   local display I am running the vncviewer on. I don't like the
   vncviewer scrollbars, what I can do? 

940
   [125]Q-63: Does x11vnc support server-side framebuffer scaling? (E.g.
941 942
   to make the desktop smaller). 

943
   [126]Q-64: Does x11vnc work with Xinerama? (i.e. multiple monitors
944 945
   joined together to form one big, single screen). 

946
   [127]Q-65: Can I use x11vnc on a multi-headed display that is not
947 948
   Xinerama (i.e. separate screens :0.0, :0.1, ... for each monitor)? 

949
   [128]Q-66: Can x11vnc show only a portion of the display? (E.g. for a
950 951
   special purpose rfb application). 

952
   [129]Q-67: Does x11vnc support the XRANDR (X Resize, Rotate and
953 954 955
   Reflection) extension? Whenever I rotate or resize the screen x11vnc
   just seems to crash. 

956
   [130]Q-68: Why is the view in my VNC viewer completely black? Or why
957
   is everything flashing around randomly? 
958

959
   [131]Q-69: I use Linux Virtual Consoles (VC's) to implement 'Fast User
960 961
   Switching' between users' sessions (e.g. Betty is on Ctrl-Alt-F7,
   Bobby is on Ctrl-Alt-F8, and Sid is on Ctrl-Alt-F1: they use those
962
   keystrokes to switch between their sessions).   How come the view in a
963 964 965 966
   VNC viewer connecting to x11vnc is either completely black or
   otherwise all messed up unless the X session x11vnc is attached to is
   in the active VC? 

967 968 969
   [132]Q-70: Can I use x11vnc to view my VMWare session remotely? 

   [133]Q-71: I am using x11vnc where my local machine has "popup/hidden
970 971 972 973
   taskbars" (e.g. GNOME or MacOS X) and the remote display where x11vnc
   runs also has "popup/hidden taskbars" (e.g. GNOME). When I move the
   mouse to the edge of the screen where the popups happen, the taskbars
   interfere and fight with each other in strange ways. What can I do? 
974

975
   [Misc: Clipboard, Beeps, Thanks, etc.]
976

977
   [134]Q-72: Does the Clipboard/Selection get transferred between the
978 979
   vncviewer and the X display? 

980
   [135]Q-73: Why don't I hear the "Beeps" in my X session (e.g. when
981
   typing tput bel in an xterm)? 
982

983
   [136]Q-74: Thanks for your program and for your help! Can I make a
984
   donation? 
985 986
     _________________________________________________________________

987 988 989

   [Building and Starting]

990
   Q-1: I can't get x11vnc to start up. It says "XOpenDisplay failed
991 992
   (null)" or "Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server" and then
   exits. What do I need to do?
993 994 995

   For the former error, you need to specify the X display to connect to
   (it also needs to be on the same machine x11vnc is to run on). Set
996
   your DISPLAY environment variable or use the [137]-display option to
997 998
   specify it. Nearly always the correct value will be ":0"

999 1000 1001
   For the latter error, you need to set up the X11 permissions
   correctly. See the xauth(1), Xsecurity(7), and xhost(1) man pages for
   much info. For example, you may need to set your XAUTHORITY
1002
   environment variable or use the [138]-auth option to point to the
1003 1004 1005 1006 1007
   correct cookie file (e.g. /home/joe/.Xauthority or /var/gdm/:0.Xauth),
   or simply be sure you run x11vnc as the correct user (i.e. the user
   who owns the X session you wish to view). Running x11vnc as root is
   not enough: you need to know where the XAUTHORITY file for the desired
   X display is. Example:
1008 1009 1010 1011 1012 1013
  x11vnc -display :0 -auth /var/gdm/:0.Xauth

   Less safe, but to avoid figuring out where the XAUTHORITY file is, if
   the person sitting at the X session types "xhost +localhost" then one
   should be able to attach x11vnc to the session (from the same
   machine). The person could then type "xhost -localhost" after x11vnc
1014 1015
   has connected to go back to the default permissions. Also, for some
   situations the -users lurk= option may be of use (please read the
1016
   documentation on the [139]-users option).
1017 1018 1019

   Some Linux distributions or display managers may set XAUTHORITY to a
   random local filename. You need to dig out where they have hidden the
1020
   MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE file (and set XAUTHORITY to it or use the [140]-auth
1021 1022 1023 1024 1025 1026 1027 1028 1029 1030 1031 1032 1033 1034 1035 1036 1037
   option). This command is often useful to find non-standard settings
   for XAUTHORITY:
  ps wwwweaux | tr ' ' '\n' | grep XAUTHORITY | sort -u

   To test out your X11 permissions, set DISPLAY and possibly XAUTHORITY
   (see your shell's man page, bash(1), tcsh(1), on how to set
   environment variables) and type xdpyinfo in the same place you will be
   typing (or otherwise running) x11vnc. If information is printed out
   about the X display (screen sizes, supported extensions, color visuals
   info) that means the X11 permissions are set up properly: xdpyinfo
   successfully connected to DISPLAY. You could also type xclock and make
   sure no errors are reported (a clock should appear on the X display,
   type Ctrl-C to quit it)

   Important: if you cannot get your X11 permissions so that the xdpyinfo
   or xclock tests work, x11vnc also will not work (all of these X
   clients must be able to connect to the X server to function properly).
1038 1039 1040 1041 1042 1043 1044 1045 1046 1047 1048 1049 1050 1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058 1059 1060 1061 1062

   Q-2: I can't get x11vnc and/or libvncserver to compile.

   Make sure you have all of the required -devel packages installed.
   These include X11/XFree86, libjpeg, libz, ...

   After running the libvncserver configure, carefully examine the output
   and the messages in the config.log file looking for missing
   components. If the configure output looks like:
  checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
  checking for X... no
  checking for XkbSelectEvents in -lX11... no
  checking for XineramaQueryScreens in -lXinerama... no
  checking for XTestFakeKeyEvent in -lXtst... no

   there is quite a bit wrong with the build environment. Hopefully
   simply adding -devel packages will fix it.

   For Debian the list seems to be:
  gcc
  make
  libc6-dev
  libjpeg62-dev
  libx11-dev
  libxext-dev
1063
  libxrandr-dev
1064 1065 1066 1067 1068 1069 1070 1071 1072 1073 1074 1075 1076
  libxtst-dev
  x-dev
  xlibs-static-dev
  zlib1g-dev

   For Redhat the list seems to be:
  gcc
  make
  glibc-devel
  libjpeg-devel
  XFree86-devel
  zlib-devel

1077 1078
   Q-3: Help, I need to run x11vnc on Solaris 2.5.1 (or other old
   Unix/Linux) and it doesn't compile!
1079 1080

   We apologize that x11vnc does not build cleanly on older versions of
1081 1082 1083 1084 1085 1086 1087 1088
   Solaris, Linux, etc.: very few users are on these old releases.

   We have heard that since Dec/2004 a Solaris 2.6 built x11vnc will run
   on Solaris Solaris 2.5 and 2.5.1 (since a workaround for XConvertCase
   is provided).

   In any event, here is a workaround for Solaris 2.5.1 (and perhaps
   earlier and perhaps non-Solaris):
1089 1090

   First use the environment settings (CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS, etc.) in the
1091
   above [141]Solaris build script to run the configure command. That
1092
   should succeed without failure. Then you have to hand edit the
1093 1094 1095 1096 1097 1098 1099 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104
   autogenerated rfb/rfbconfig.h file in the source tree, and just before
   the last #endif at the bottom of that file insert these workaround
   lines:
struct timeval _tmp_usleep_tv;
#define usleep(x) \
    _tmp_usleep_tv.tv_sec  = (x) / 1000000; \
    _tmp_usleep_tv.tv_usec = (x) % 1000000; \
    select(0, NULL, NULL, NULL, &_tmp_usleep_tv);
int gethostname(char *name, int namelen);
long random();
int srandom(unsigned int seed);
#undef LIBVNCSERVER_HAVE_LIBPTHREAD
1105
#ifndef SHUT_RDWR
1106
#define SHUT_RDWR 2
1107 1108
#endif
#ifndef in_addr_t
1109
typedef unsigned int in_addr_t;
1110
#endif
1111
#define snprintf(a, n, args...) sprintf((a), ## args)
1112

1113 1114
   Then run make with the Solaris build script environment, everything
   should compile without problems, and the resulting x11vnc binary
1115 1116 1117 1118
   should work OK. If some non-x11vnc related programs fail (e.g. test
   programs) and the x11vnc binary is not created try "make -k" to have
   it keep going. Similar sorts of kludges in rfb/rfbconfig.h can be done
   on other older OS (Solaris, Linux, ...) releases.
1119

1120
   Here are some notes for similar steps that need to be done to build on
1121
   [142]SunOS 4.x
1122

1123 1124 1125 1126 1127
   Please let us know if you had to use the above workaround (and whether
   it worked or not). If there is enough demand we will try to push clean
   compilations back to earlier Solaris, Linux, etc, releases.

   Q-4: Where can I get a precompiled x11vnc binary for my Operating
1128 1129
   System?

1130
   Hopefully the [143]build steps above and [144]FAQ provide enough info
1131 1132 1133 1134
   for a painless compile for most environments. Please report problems
   with the x11vnc configure, make, etc. on your system (if your system
   is known to compile other GNU packages successfully).

1135 1136
   There are precompiled x11vnc binaries built by other groups that are
   available at the following locations:
1137
    Debian:         (.deb)  [145]http://packages.debian.org/x11vnc
1138

1139 1140 1141 1142
   Slackware: (.tgz) [146]http://www.linuxpackages.net/ Redhat/Fedora:
   (.rpm) [147]http://dag.wieers.com/packages/x11vnc/ Solaris: (pkg)
   [148]http://www.sunfreeware.com/ wwexptools: (.tgz)
   [149]http://www.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/packages.html The
1143
   last one, wwexptools, provides a variety of Unix binaries (Linux,
1144
   Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, ...) with the intent of being compatible on a
1145 1146 1147 1148 1149 1150 1151 1152 1153
   wide range of OS releases. Find x11vnc near the bottom of that page
   and select 'download info'.

   Note: it appears some of the wwexptools x11vnc binaries are not
   compiled with libz and libjpeg and so the fast compression encodings:
   "Tight", "ZRLE", etc are not supported by those binaries. You can see
   this by looking at the x11vnc output and if it says the encoding for a
   client is "hextile" then likely the fast compression encodings are
   missing. If you want optimal performance on your OS, you should see
1154
   the [150]build notes above for where to download libz and libjpeg, and
1155 1156
   then build everything with gcc. For Solaris, the
   http://www.sunfreeware.com/ packages are built with libz and libjpeg.
1157

1158 1159
   If the above binaries don't work and building x11vnc on your OS fails
   (and all else fails!) you can try one of my motley collection of
1160
   [151]test binaries. Some may be old, some may have extra debugging
runge's avatar
runge committed
1161
   output, etc. One of them may work on your OS...
1162 1163 1164 1165 1166 1167 1168 1169

   As a general note, the x11vnc program is simple enough you don't
   really need to install a package: the binary will in most cases work
   as is and from any location (as long as your system libraries are not
   too old, etc). So, for Linux distributions that are not one of the
   above, the x11vnc binary from the above packages has a good chance of
   working. You can "install" it by just copying the x11vnc binary to the
   desired directory in your PATH. Tip on extracting files from a Debian
1170 1171
   package: extract the archive via a command like: "ar x
   x11vnc_0.6-2_i386.deb" and then you can find the binary in the
1172 1173 1174
   resulting data.tar.gz tar file. Also, rpm2cpio(1) is useful in
   extracting files from rpm packages.

1175 1176 1177 1178 1179
   Q-5: Where can I get a VNC Viewer binary (or source code) for the
   Operating System I will be viewing from?

   To obtain VNC viewers for the viewing side (Windows, Mac OS, or Unix)
   try here:
1180 1181 1182
     * [152]http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html
     * [153]http://www.realvnc.com/download-free.html
     * [154]http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/
1183 1184

   Q-6: How can I see all of x11vnc's command line options and
1185 1186
   documentation on how to use them?

1187 1188
   Run:  x11vnc -opts   to list just the option names or run:  x11vnc
   -help   for long descriptions about each option. The output is listed
1189
   [155]here as well.
1190

1191
   Q-7: I don't like typing arcane command line options every time I
1192
   start x11vnc. What can I do? Is there a config file? Or a GUI?
1193 1194 1195 1196 1197 1198 1199 1200 1201

   You could create a shell script that calls x11vnc with your options:
#!/bin/sh
#
# filename: X11vnc  (i.e. not "x11vnc")
# It resides in a directory in $PATH. "chmod 755 X11vnc" has been run on it.
#
x11vnc -nap -wait 50 -localhost -rfbauth $HOME/.vnc/passwd -display :0 $*

1202 1203
   a similar thing can be done via aliases in your shell (bash, tcsh,
   csh, etc..).
1204 1205 1206 1207 1208 1209

   Or as of Jun/2004 in the libvncserver CVS you can use the simple
   $HOME/.x11vncrc config file support. If that file exists, each line is
   taken as a command line option. E.g. the above would be:
# this is a comment in my ~/.x11vncrc file
nap
1210
wait 50        # this is a comment to the end of the line.
1211 1212 1213 1214 1215 1216
-localhost     # note: the leading "-" is optional.
rfbauth  /home/fred/.vnc/passwd
display :0

   At some point this config file support will be expanded.

1217 1218
   As of Dec/2004 in the libvncserver CVS there is now a simple tcl/tk
   GUI based on the remote-control functionality that was added. It's not
1219
   particularly user-friendly, it just provides a point and click mode to
1220
   set all the many x11vnc parameters and obtain help on them. See the
1221
   [156]-gui option for more info. Examples: "x11vnc ... -gui" and
1222 1223
   "x11vnc ... -gui other:0" in the latter case the gui is displayed on
   other:0, not the X display x11vnc is polling.
1224

1225 1226
   Q-8: Can I make x11vnc more quiet and also go into the background
   after starting up?
1227

1228
   Use the [157]-q and [158]-bg options, respectively.  (also: -quiet is
1229
   an alias for -q)
1230

1231
   Note that under -bg the stderr messages will be lost unless you use
1232
   the "[159]-o logfile" option.
1233 1234 1235 1236 1237 1238 1239 1240 1241

   Q-9: Sometimes when a VNC viewer dies abruptly, x11vnc also dies with
   the error message like: "Broken pipe". I'm using the -forever mode and
   I want x11vnc to keep running.

   As of Jan/2004 in the libvncserver CVS the SIGPIPE signal is ignored.
   So if a viewer client terminates abruptly, libvncserver will notice on
   the next I/O operation and will close the connection and continue on.

1242 1243
   Up until of Apr/2004 the above fix only works for BSD signal systems
   (Linux, FreeBSD, ...) For SYSV systems there is a workaround in my
1244
   [160]x11vnc.c file. It also has an [161]option -sigpipe exit to have
1245
   x11vnc clean up and exit upon receiving SIGPIPE.
1246

1247 1248 1249
   [Win2VNC Related]

   Q-10: I have two separate machine displays in front of me, one Windows
1250 1251 1252 1253
   the other X11: can I use x11vnc in combination with Win2VNC in
   dual-screen mode to pass the keystrokes and mouse motions to the X11
   display?

1254
   Yes, for best response start up x11vnc with the "[162]-nofb" option
1255
   (disables framebuffer polling, and does other optimizations) on the
1256 1257
   secondary display (X11) machine. Then start up Win2VNC on the primary
   display (Windows) referring it to the secondary display.
1258

1259
   This will also work X11 to X11 using [163]x2vnc, however you would
1260 1261 1262 1263
   probably just want to avoid VNC and use x2x for that.

   For reference, here are some links to Win2VNC-like programs for
   multiple monitor setups:
1264 1265 1266 1267 1268
     * [164]Original Win2VNC
     * [165]Enhanced Win2VNC and [166]sourceforge link
     * [167]x2vnc
     * [168]x2x also [169]here
     * [170]zvnc (MorphOS)
1269

1270
   All of them will work with x11vnc (except x2x where it is not needed).
1271

1272 1273 1274
   Q-11: I am running Win2VNC on my Windows machine and "x11vnc -nofb" on
   Unix to pass keyboard and mouse to the Unix monitor. Whenever I start
   Win2VNC it quickly disconnects and x11vnc says:
1275
   rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: read: Connection reset by peer
1276 1277

   Is the default visual of the X display you run x11vnc on low color
1278 1279 1280 1281
   (e.g. 8 bit per pixel PseudoColor)? (you can run xdpyinfo to check,
   look in the "screen" section). There seems to be a bug in Win2VNC in
   that it cannot deal correctly with colormaps (PseudoColor is the most
   common example of a visual with a colormap).
1282 1283 1284

   If so, there are a couple options. 1) Can you set the default visual
   on your display to be depth 24 TrueColor? Sun machines often have 8+24
1285 1286
   overlay/multi-depth visuals, and you can make the default visual depth
   24 TrueColor (see fbconfig(1) and Xsun(1)). 2) As of Feb/2004, in the
1287
   libvncserver CVS, x11vnc has the [171]-visual option to allow you to
1288 1289
   force the framebuffer visual to whatever you want (this usually messes
   up the colors unless you are very clever). In this case, the option
1290
   provides a convenient workaround for the Win2VNC bug:
1291 1292 1293
  x11vnc -nofb -visual TrueColor -display :0 ...

   So the visual will be set to 8bpp TrueColor and Win2VNC can handle
1294 1295
   this. Since Win2VNC does not use the framebuffer data there should be
   no problems in doing this.
1296
   [Color Issues]
1297

1298
   Q-12: The X display I run x11vnc on is only 8 bits per pixel (bpp)
1299
   PseudoColor (i.e. only 256 distinct colors). The x11vnc colors may
1300
   start out OK, but after a while they are incorrect in certain windows.
1301

1302
   Use the [172]-flashcmap option to have x11vnc watch for changes in the
1303 1304 1305 1306 1307 1308 1309 1310
   colormap, and propagate those changes back to connected clients. This
   can be slow (since the whole screen must be updated over the network
   whenever the colormap changes). This flashing colormap behavior often
   happens if an application installs its own private colormap when the
   mouse is in its window. "netscape -install" is a well-known historical
   example of this. Consider reconfiguring the system to 16 bpp or depth
   24 TrueColor if at all possible.

1311
   Also note that in some rare cases the [173]-notruecolor option has
1312 1313 1314 1315
   corrected colors on 8bpp displays. The red, green, and blue masks were
   non-zero in 8bpp PseudoColor on an obscure setup, and this option
   corrected the problems.

1316
   Q-13: Color problems: Why are the colors for some windows messed up in
1317 1318 1319
   x11vnc? BTW, my X display has nice overlay/multi-depth visuals of
   different color depths: e.g. there are both depth 8 and 24 visuals
   available at the same time.
1320

1321
   You may want to review the [174]previous question regarding 8 bpp
1322
   PseudoColor.
1323

1324
   On some hardware (Sun/SPARC, Sgi), the [175]-overlay option discussed
1325 1326
   a couple paragraphs down may solve this for you (you may want to skip
   to it directly).
1327 1328 1329 1330 1331 1332 1333 1334

   Run xdpyinfo(1) to see what the default visual is and what the depths
   of the other visuals are. Does the default visual have a depth of 8?
   If it does, can you possibly re-configure your X server to make the
   depth 24 visual the default? If you can do it, this will save you a
   lot of grief WRT colors and x11vnc (and for general usage too!). Here
   is how I do this on an old Sparcstation 20 running Solaris 9 with SX
   graphics
1335 1336
  xinit -- -dev /dev/fb defclass TrueColor defdepth 24

1337 1338
   and it works nicely (note: to log into console from the dtlogin
   window, select "Options -> Command Line Login", then login and enter
1339 1340 1341 1342
   the above command). See the -dev section of the Xsun(1) manpage for a
   description of the above arguments. If you have root permission, a
   more permanent and convenient thing to do is to record the arguments
   in a line like:
1343 1344
  :0  Local local_uid@console root /usr/openwin/bin/Xsun -dev /dev/fb defclass
TrueColor defdepth 24
1345

1346 1347
   in /etc/dt/config/Xservers (copy /usr/dt/config/Xservers). Also look
   at the fbconfig(1) and related manpages (e.g. ffbconfig, m64config,
1348
   pgxconfig, SUNWjfb_config, etc ...) for hardware framebuffer settings
runge's avatar
runge committed
1349 1350 1351 1352 1353 1354 1355 1356 1357
   that may achieve the same effect.

   In general for non-Sun machines, look at the "-cc class" and related
   options in your X server manpage (perhaps Xserver(1)), it may allow
   modifying the default visual (e.g. "-cc 4", see <X11/X.h> for the
   visual class numbers). On XFree86 some video card drivers (e.g. Matrox
   mga) have settings like Option "Overlay" "24,8" to support multi-depth
   overlays. For these, use the "-cc 4" X server command line option to
   get a depth 24 default visual.
1358

1359

1360
   The -overlay mode: Another option is if the system with overlay
1361
   visuals is a Sun system running Solaris or Sgi running IRIX you can
1362
   use the [176]-overlay x11vnc option (Aug/2004) to have x11vnc use the
1363 1364 1365 1366
   Solaris XReadScreen(3X11) function to poll the "true view" of the
   whole screen at depth 24 TrueColor. XReadDisplay(3X11) is used on
   IRIX. This is useful for Legacy applications (older versions of
   Cadence CAD apps are mentioned by x11vnc users) that require the
runge's avatar
runge committed
1367 1368 1369
   default depth be 8bpp, or the app will use a 8bpp visual even if depth
   24 visuals are available, and so the default depth workaround
   described in the previous paragraph is not sufficient for these apps.
1370 1371

   Misc. notes on -overlay mode: An amusing by-product of -overlay mode
1372 1373
   is that mouse cursor shape is correct. The -overlay mode may be
   somewhat slower than normal mode due to the extra framebuffer
1374 1375
   manipulations that must be performed. Also, on Solaris there is a bug
   in that for some popup menus, the windows they overlap will have
1376 1377
   painting errors (flashing colors) while the popup is up (a workaround
   is to disable SaveUnders by passing -su to Xsun, e.g. in your
1378
   /etc/dt/config/Xservers file).
1379

1380

runge's avatar
runge committed
1381 1382 1383
   Colors still not working correctly? Run xwininfo on the application
   with the messed up colors to verify that the depth of its visual is
   different from the default visual depth (gotten from xdpyinfo). One
1384
   possible workaround in this case is to use the [177]-id option to
runge's avatar
runge committed
1385 1386 1387
   point x11vnc at the application window itself. If the application is
   complicated (lots of toplevel windows and popup menus) this may not be
   acceptable, and may even crash x11vnc (but not the application).
1388

1389 1390
   It is theoretically possible to solve this problem in general (see
   xwd(1) for example), but it does not seem trivial or sufficiently fast
1391
   for x11vnc to be able to do so in real time. Fortunately the
1392
   [178]-overlay option works for Solaris machines with overlay visuals
1393
   where most of this problem occurs.
1394

1395
   Q-14: How do I figure out the window id to supply to the -id windowid
1396 1397 1398 1399
   option?

   Run the xwininfo program in a terminal. It will ask you to click on
   the desired application window. After clicking, it will print out much
1400 1401
   information, including the window id (e.g. 0x6000010). Also, the
   visual and depth of the window printed out is often useful in
1402
   debugging x11vnc [179]problems.
1403

1404 1405 1406
   When using -id windowid, note that some VNC viewers will have problems
   rendering screens that have a width that is not a multiple of 4. Try
   to manually adjust the window width before starting x11vnc -id ....
1407

1408
   Also, as of Dec/2004 libvncserver CVS you can use "[180]-id pick" to
1409
   have x11vnc run xwininfo(1) for you and after you click the window it
1410
   extracts the windowid. Besides "pick" there is also "id:root" to allow
1411 1412
   you to go back to root window when doing remote-control.

1413
   Q-15: Why don't menus or other transient windows come up when I am
1414 1415 1416 1417 1418 1419 1420
   using the -id windowid option to view a single application window?

   This is related to the behavior of the XGetImage(3X11) and
   XShmGetImage() interfaces regarding backingstore, saveunders, etc. The
   way the image is retrieved depends on some aspects of how the X server
   maintains the display image data and whether other windows are
   clipping or obscuring it. See the XGetImage man page for more details.
1421 1422
   If you disable BackingStore and SaveUnders in the X server you should
   be able to see these transient windows.
1423 1424

   If things are not working and you still want to do the single window
1425
   polling, try the [181]-sid windowid option ("shifted" windowid).
1426 1427

   x11vnc is known to crash under both -id and -sid, so both modes are
1428
   still experimental. Please report any reproducible bugs.
1429

1430 1431
   Q-16: My X display is depth 24 at 24bpp (instead of the normal depth
   24 at 32bpp). I'm having lots of color and visual problems with x11vnc
runge's avatar
runge committed
1432
   and/or vncviewer. What's up?
1433 1434 1435 1436 1437 1438 1439 1440 1441 1442 1443 1444 1445 1446 1447 1448 1449 1450 1451 1452 1453 1454 1455 1456 1457 1458 1459 1460 1461 1462 1463 1464 1465 1466 1467 1468 1469

   First off, depth 24 at 24bpp (bpp=bits-per-pixel) is fairly uncommon
   and can cause problems in general. It also can be slower than depth 24
   at 32bpp. You might want to switch to 32bpp (for XFree86 see the
   "-fbbpp 32", DefaultFbBpp, FbBpp and related options). Perhaps you
   have 24bpp because the video memory of the machine is low and the
   screen wouldn't fit in video RAM at 32bpp. For this case depth 16 at
   16bpp might be an acceptable option.

   In any event x11vnc should handle depth 24 at 24bpp (although
   performance may be slower). There are some caveats involving the
   viewer however:

   The RealVNC Unix viewer cannot handle 24bpp from the server, it will
   say: "main: setPF: not 8, 16 or 32 bpp?" and exit. I have not checked
   the RealVNC Windows viewer.

   So you need to use the TightVNC Unix viewer. However there are some
   problems with that too. It seems libvncserver does not do 24bpp
   correctly with the Tight encoding. The colors and screen ultimately
   get messed up. So you have to use a different encoding with the
   TightVNC vncviewer, try "zlib", "hextile", or one of the other
   encodings (e.g. vncviewer -encodings "zlib hextile" ...). I have not
   checked the TightVNC or UltraVNC Windows viewers.

   It appears the older RealVNC Unix viewers (e.g. 3.3.3 and 3.3.7) can
   handle 24bpp from the server, so you may want to use those. They
   evidently request 32 bpp and libvncserver obliges.

   Now coming the opposite direction if you are running the vncviewer on
   the 24bpp display, TightVNC will fail with "Can't cope with 24
   bits-per-pixel. Sorry." and RealVNC will fail with "main: Error:
   couldn't find suitable pixmap format" so evidently you cannot use
   24bpp for the vncviewers to work on that X display.
   [Xterminals]

   Q-17: Can I use x11vnc to view and interact with an Xterminal (e.g.
1470 1471 1472 1473 1474 1475
   NCD) that is not running UNIX and so x11vnc cannot be run on it
   directly?

   You can, but it will likely be very wasteful of network bandwidth
   since you will be polling the X display over the network as opposed to
   over the local hardware. To do this, run x11vnc on a UNIX machine as
1476
   close as possible network-wise (e.g. same switch) to the Xterminal
1477
   machine. Use the [182]-display option to point the display to that of
1478
   the Xterminal (you'll of course need basic X11 permission to do that)
1479
   and also supply the [183]-noshm option (this enables the polling over
1480
   the network).
1481 1482 1483 1484

   The response will likely be sluggish. This mode is not recommended
   except for "quick checks" of hard to get to X servers. Use something
   like -wait 150 to cut down on the polling rate. You may also need
1485
   [184]-flipbyteorder if the colors get messed up due to endian byte
1486
   order differences.
1487

1488 1489
   Q-18: How do I get my X permissions (MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE) correct for a
   Unix/Linux machine acting as an Xterminal?
1490

1491 1492 1493 1494 1495 1496 1497 1498
   If the display machine is a traditional Xterminal (where the X server
   runs on the Xterminal box, but all of the X client applications run on
   a central server), the login display manager, and hence the
   MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE auth files, are on the central server and not on the
   Xterminal where the X server and x11vnc processes are running. Somehow
   the MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE auth file data must be copied to the Xterminal.
   If $HOME/.Xauthority is exported via NFS (this is insecure of course),
   then x11vnc can simply pick it up via NFS (you may need to use the
1499
   [185]-auth option to point to the correct file). Other options include
1500
   copying the auth file using scp, or something like:
runge's avatar
runge committed
1501
  central-server> xauth nextract - xterm123:0 | ssh xterm123 xauth nmerge -
1502

1503
   and then perhaps ssh from central-server to xterm123 to start x11vnc.
1504 1505
   You can use "xauth -f /path/to/cookie-file list" to examine the
   contents of the cookie in a file "/path/to/cookie-file". See the
1506 1507 1508
   xauth(1) manpage for more details.

   If the display name needs to be changed between the two hosts, see
1509
   [186]this note on the "xauth add ..." command.
1510

1511 1512
   A less secure option is to run something like "xhost +127.0.0.1" while
   sitting at the Xterminal to allow cookie-free local access for x11vnc.
runge's avatar
runge committed
1513
   You can run "xhost -127.0.0.1" after x11vnc connects if you want.
1514 1515 1516

   If the Xterminal is really stripped down and doesn't have any user
   accounts, NFS, etc. you'll need to contact your system administrator
1517
   to set something up. It can be done!
1518

1519
   Not recommended, but as a last resort, you could have x11vnc [187]poll
1520 1521 1522 1523 1524
   the Xterminal over the network.

   Note: use of Display Manager (gdm, kdm, ...) auth cookie files (i.e.
   from /var/...,  /tmp/..., or elsewhere) may require modification via
   xauth(1) to correctly include the display x11vnc refers to (e.g.
1525
   "xauth -f cookie-file add :0 . 45be51ae2ce9dfbacd882ab3ef8e96b1",
1526 1527 1528 1529 1530
   where 45be51... was found from an "xauth -f /var/... list") or other
   reasons. See xauth(1) manpage for full details on how to transfer an
   MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE between machines and displays.

   [Remote Control]
1531

1532
   Q-19: How do I stop x11vnc once it is running in the background?
1533

1534 1535
   As of Dec/2004 in the libvncserver CVS there is a remote control
   feature. It can change a huge amount of things on the fly: see the
1536
   [188]-remote and [189]-query options. To shut down the running x11vnc
1537 1538
   server just type "x11vnc -R stop". To disconnect all clients do
   "x11vnc -R disconnect:all", etc.
1539

1540
   For older versions: If the [190]-forever option has not been supplied,
1541
   x11vnc will automatically exit after the first client disconnects. In
1542 1543 1544
   general you will have to kill the x11vnc process This can be done via:
   "kill NNNNN" (where NNNNN is the x11vnc process id number found from
   ps(1)), or "pkill x11vnc", or "killall x11vnc" (Linux only).
1545

1546
   If you have not put x11vnc in the background via the [191]-bg option
1547 1548 1549 1550 1551 1552 1553 1554
   or shell & operator, then simply press Ctrl-C in the shell where
   x11vnc is running to stop it. Potential Gotcha: If somehow your
   Keypress of Ctrl-C went through x11vnc to the Xserver that then
   delivered it to x11vnc it is possible one or both of the Ctrl or C
   keys will be left stuck in the pressed down state in the Xserver.
   Tapping the stuck key (either via a new x11vnc or at the physical
   console) will release it from the stuck state. If the keyboard seems
   to be acting strangely it is often fixed by tapping Ctrl, Shift, and
1555
   Alt. Alternatively, the [192]-clear_mods option and [193]-clear_keys
1556 1557 1558
   option can be used to release pressed keys at startup and exit.

   Q-20: Can I change settings in x11vnc without having to restart it?
1559
   Can I remote control it?
1560

1561
   Look at the [194]-remote (same as -R) and [195]-query (same as -Q)
1562 1563 1564 1565 1566 1567 1568 1569 1570
   options added in the Dec/2004 libvncserver CVS. They allow nearly
   everything to be changed dynamically and settings to be queried.
   Examples: "x11vnc -R shared", "x11vnc -R forever", "x11vnc -R
   scale:3/4", "x11vnc -Q modtweak", "x11vnc -R stop", "x11vnc -R
   disconnect:all", etc.. These commands do not start a x11vnc server,
   but rather communicate with one that is already running. The X display
   (VNC_CONNECT property) is used as the communication channel, so the X
   permissions and DISPLAY must be set up correctly for communication to
   be possible.
1571 1572

   There is also a simple tcl/tk gui based on this remote control
1573
   mechanism. See the [196]-gui option for more info.
1574

1575 1576
   [Security and Permissions]

1577 1578 1579 1580 1581 1582 1583 1584
   Q-21: How do I create a VNC password for use with x11vnc?

   You may already have one in $HOME/.vnc/passwd if you have used, say,
   the vncserver program from the regular RealVNC or TightVNC packages
   (i.e. launching the Xvnc server). Otherwise, you could use the
   vncpasswd(1) program from those packages. The libvncserver package
   also comes with a simple program: storepasswd in the examples
   directory. And as of Jun/2004 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc supports
1585
   the -storepasswd "pass" "file" [197]option, which is the the same
1586 1587 1588 1589
   functionality of storepasswd. Be sure to quote the "pass" if it
   contains shell meta characters, spaces, etc. Example:
  x11vnc -storepasswd 'sword*fish' $HOME/myvncpasswd

1590
   You then use the password via the x11vnc option: [198]-rfbauth
1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598
   $HOME/myvncpasswd

   Compared to vncpasswd(1) the latter two methods are a somewhat unsafe
   because the password is specified on the command line and so someone
   may see it by using ps(1) or looking over your shoulder. Also watch
   out for the command winding up in your shell's history file (history
   -c is often a way to clear it).

1599
   x11vnc also has the [199]-passwdfile and -passwd/-viewpasswd plain
1600 1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606
   text (i.e. not obscured like the -rfbauth VNC passwords) password
   options.

   Q-22: Can I have two passwords for VNC viewers, one for full access
   and the other for view-only access to the display?

   Yes, as of May/2004 in the libvncserver CVS there is the
1607 1608
   [200]-viewpasswd option to supply the view-only password. Note the
   full-access password option [201]-passwd must be supplied at the same
1609 1610 1611 1612
   time. E.g.: -passwd sword -viewpasswd fish.

   To avoid specifying the passwords on the command line (where they
   could be observed via the ps(1) command by any user) you can use the
1613
   [202]-passwdfile option to specify a file containing plain text
1614 1615 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620
   passwords. Presumably this file is readable only by you, and ideally
   it is located on the machine x11vnc is run on (to avoid being snooped
   on over the network). The first line of this file is the full-access
   password. If there is a second line in the file and it is non-blank,
   it is taken as the view-only password. (use "__EMPTY__" to supply an
   empty one).

1621
   View-only passwords currently do not work for the [203]-rfbauth
1622 1623 1624 1625 1626 1627 1628 1629 1630 1631 1632 1633
   password option (standard VNC password storing mechanism). FWIW, note
   that although the output (usually placed in $HOME/.vnc/passwd) by the
   vncpasswd or storepasswd programs (or from x11vnc -storepasswd) looks
   encrypted they are really just obscured to avoid "casual" password
   stealing. It takes almost no skill to figure out how to extract the
   plain text passwords from $HOME/.vnc/passwd since it is very
   straight-forward to work out what to do from the VNC source code.

   Q-23: Can I fine tune what types of user input are allowed? E.g. have
   some users just be able to move the mouse, but not click or type
   anything?

1634
   As of Feb/2005, the [204]-input option allows you to do this. "K",
1635 1636 1637 1638 1639 1640 1641 1642 1643
   "M", and "B" stand for Keystroke, Mouse-motion, and Button-clicks,
   respectively. The setting: "-input M" makes attached viewers only able
   to move the mouse. "-input KMB,M" lets normal clients do everything
   and enables view-only clients to move the mouse.

   These settings can also be applied on a per-viewer basis via the
   remote control mechanism or the GUI. E.g. x11vnc -R input:hostname:M

   Q-24: Why does x11vnc exit as soon as the VNC viewer disconnects? And
1644 1645 1646 1647 1648
   why doesn't it allow more than one VNC viewer to connect at the same
   time?

   These defaults are simple safety measures to avoid someone unknowingly
   leaving his X11 desktop exposed (to the internet, say) for long
1649
   periods of time. Use the [205]-forever option (aka -many) to have
1650
   x11vnc wait for more connections after the first client disconnects.
1651
   Use the [206]-shared option to have x11vnc allow multiple clients to
1652
   connect simultaneously.
1653

1654
   Recommended additional safety measures include using ssh ([207]see
1655
   above), stunnel, or a VPN to authenticate and encrypt the viewer
1656 1657
   connections or to at least use the -rfbauth passwd-file [208]option to
   use VNC password protection (or [209]-passwdfile) It is up to you to
1658 1659 1660
   apply these security measures, they will not be done for you
   automatically.

1661
   Q-25: Can I limit which machines incoming VNC clients can connect
1662 1663
   from?

1664
   Yes, look at the [210]-allow and [211]-localhost options to limit
1665
   connections by hostname or IP address. E.g.
1666 1667 1668 1669 1670
  x11vnc -allow 192.168.0.1,192.168.0.2

   for those two hosts or
  x11vnc -allow 192.168.0.

1671
   for a subnet. For individual hosts you can use the hostname instead of
1672 1673
   the IP number, e.g.: "-allow snoopy", and "-allow darkstar,wombat".
   Note that -localhost is the same as "-allow 127.0.0.1"
1674 1675

   For more control, build libvncserver with libwrap support
1676
   [212](tcp_wrappers) and then use /etc/hosts.allow See hosts_access(5)
1677
   for complete details.
1678

1679
   Q-26: How do I build x11vnc/libvncserver with libwrap (tcp_wrappers)
1680 1681 1682 1683 1684 1685
   support?

   Here is one way to pass this information to the configure script:
  env CPPFLAGS=-DUSE_LIBWRAP LDFLAGS=-lwrap ./configure

   then run make as usual. This requires libwrap and its development
1686
   package (tcpd.h) to be installed on the build machine. If additional
1687 1688
   CPPFLAGS or LDFLAGS options are needed supply them as well using
   quotes.
1689 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694

   The resulting x11vnc then uses libwrap/tcp_wrappers for connections.
   The service name you will use in /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny
   is "vnc", e.g.:
  vnc: 192.168.100.3 .example.com

1695
   Note that if you run x11vnc out of [213]inetd you do not need to build
1696 1697 1698
   x11vnc with libwrap support because the /usr/sbin/tcpd reference in
   /etc/inetd.conf handles the tcp_wrappers stuff.

runge's avatar
runge committed
1699 1700 1701 1702
   Q-27: Can I have x11vnc only listen on one network interface (e.g.
   internal LAN) rather than having it listen on all network interfaces
   and relying on -allow to filter unwanted connections out?

1703
   As of Mar/2005 in the libvncserver CVS, there is the "[214]-listen
runge's avatar
runge committed
1704 1705 1706
   ipaddr" option that enables this. For ipaddr either supply the desired
   network interface's IP address (or use a hostname that resolves to it)
   or use the string "localhost". For additional filtering simultaneously
1707
   use the "[215]-allow host1,..." option to allow only specific hosts
runge's avatar
runge committed
1708 1709 1710 1711
   in.

   This option is useful if you want insure that no one can even begin a
   dialog with x11vnc from untrusted network interfaces (e.g. ppp0). The
1712
   option [216]-localhost now implies "-listen localhost" since that is
runge's avatar
runge committed
1713 1714 1715
   what most people expect it to do.

   Q-28: Now that -localhost implies listening only on the loopback
1716
   interface, how I can occasionally allow in a non-localhost via the
runge's avatar
runge committed
1717 1718
   allowonce remote control command?

1719
   To do this specify "[217]-allow localhost". Unlike [218]-localhost
runge's avatar
runge committed
1720 1721 1722 1723 1724 1725
   this will leave x11vnc listening on all interfaces (but of course only
   allowing in local connections, e.g. ssh redirs). Then you can later
   run "x11vnc -R allowonce:somehost" or use to gui to permit a one-shot
   connection from a remote host.

   Note that if you do a lot of changing of the listening interface
1726 1727
   ([219]-listen option) via remote control or gui, you may need to also
   manually adjust the [220]-allow list if you unexpectedly get into a
runge's avatar
runge committed
1728
   state where the allow list cannot match any hosts that would be coming
1729
   in on the listening interface. If you just toggle [221]-localhost on
runge's avatar
runge committed
1730 1731 1732
   and off x11vnc should see to it that you never get into such a state.

   Q-29: How can I tunnel my connection to x11vnc via an encrypted SSH
1733 1734
   channel between two Unix machines?

1735
   See the description earlier on this page on [222]how to tunnel VNC via
1736 1737 1738 1739 1740 1741
   SSH from Unix to Unix. A number of ways are described along with some
   issues you may encounter.

   Other secure encrypted methods exists, e.g. stunnel, IPSEC, various
   VPNs, etc.

runge's avatar
runge committed
1742
   Q-30: How can I tunnel my connection to x11vnc via an encrypted SSH
1743 1744
   channel from Windows using an SSH client like Putty?

1745
   [223]Above we described how to tunnel VNC via SSH from Unix to Unix,
1746 1747 1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763 1764 1765 1766 1767
   you may want to review it. To do this from Windows using Putty it
   would go something like this:
     * In the Putty dialog window under 'Session' enter the hostname or
       IP number of the Unix machine with display to be viewed.
     * Make sure the SSH protocol is selected and the server port is
       correct.
     * Under 'Connections/SSH/Tunnels' Add a Local connection with
       'Source port:  5900' and 'Destination:  localhost:5900'
     * Log into the remote machine by pressing 'Open' and supplying
       username, password, etc.
     * In that SSH shell, start up x11vnc by typing the command: x11vnc
       -display :0 plus any other desired options.
     * Finally, start up your VNC Viewer in Windows and enter
       'localhost:0' as the VNC server.

   You can keep all of the settings in a Putty 'Saved Session'. Also,
   once everything is working, you can consider putting x11vnc -display
   :0 (plus other cmdline options) in the 'Remote command' Putty setting
   under 'Connections/SSH'. It is likely possible to script the whole
   process in a BAT file including launching the VNC viewer by using the
   plink Putty utility. Send us the script if you get that working.

1768 1769
   For extra protection feel free to run x11vnc with the [224]-localhost
   and [225]-rfbauth/[226]-passwdfile options.
1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777

   If the machine you SSH into via Putty is not the same machine with the
   X display you wish to view (e.g. your company provides incoming SSH
   access to a gateway machine), then you need to change the above Putty
   dialog setting to: 'Destination: otherhost:5900', Once logged in,
   you'll need to do a second login (ssh or rsh) to the workstation
   machine 'otherhost' and then start up x11vnc on it.

1778
   As discussed [227]above another option is to first start the VNC
1779
   viewer in "listen" mode, and then launch x11vnc with the
1780
   "[228]-connect localhost" option to establish the reverse connection.
1781 1782 1783 1784
   In this case a Remote port redirection (not Local) is needed for port
   5500 instead of 5900 (i.e. 'Source port:  5500' and
   'Destination:  localhost:5500' for a Remote connection).

runge's avatar
runge committed
1785
   Q-31: Can I prompt the user at the local X display whether the
1786 1787 1788 1789
   incoming VNC client should be accepted or not? Can I decide to make
   some clients view-only? How about running an arbitrary program to make
   the decisions?

1790
   Yes, look at the "[229]-accept command" option, it allows you to
1791 1792 1793 1794
   specify an external command that is run for each new client. (use
   quotes around the command if it contains spaces, etc.). If the
   external command returns 0 the client is accepted, otherwise the
   client is rejected. See below how to also accept clients view-only.
1795 1796 1797 1798 1799 1800 1801 1802

   The external command will have the RFB_CLIENT_IP environment variable
   set to the client's numerical IP address, RFB_CLIENT_PORT its port
   number. Similarly for RFB_SERVER_IP and RFB_SERVER_PORT to allow
   identification of the tcp virtual circuit. DISPLAY will be set to that
   of the X11 display being polled. Also, RFB_X11VNC_PID is set to the
   x11vnc process id (e.g. in case you decided to kill it), RFB_CLIENT_ID
   will be an id number, and RFB_CLIENT_COUNT the number of other clients
1803
   currently connected. RFB_MODE will be "accept".
1804 1805 1806 1807 1808

   As a special case, "-accept popup" will instruct x11vnc to create its
   own simple popup window. To accept the client press "y" or click mouse
   on the "Yes" button. To reject the client press "n" or click mouse on
   the "No" button. To accept the client View-only, press "v" or click
1809
   mouse on the "View" button. If the [230]-viewonly option has been
1810 1811
   supplied, the "View" action will not be present: the whole display is
   view only in that case.
1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824

   The popup window times out after 120 seconds, to change this behavior
   use "-accept popup:N" where N is the number of seconds (use 0 for no
   timeout). More tricks: "-accept popupmouse" will only take mouse click
   responses, while "-accept popupkey" will only take keystroke responses
   (popup takes both). After any of the 3 popup keywords you can supply a
   position of the window: +N+M, (the default is to center the window)
   e.g. -accept popupmouse+10+10.

   Also as a special case "-accept xmessage" will run the xmessage(1)
   program to prompt the user whether the client should be accepted or
   not. This requires that you have xmessage installed and available via
   PATH. In case it is not already on your system, the xmessage program
1825
   is available at [231]ftp://ftp.x.org/
1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863

   To include view-only decisions for the external commands, prefix the
   command something like this: "yes:0,no:*,view:3 mycommand ..." This
   associates the three actions: yes(accept), no(reject), and
   view(accept-view-only), with the numerical return codes. Use "*"
   instead of a number to set the default action (e.g. in case the
   external command returns an unexpected return code).

   Here is an example -accept script called accept_or_lock. It uses
   xmessage and xlock (replace with your screen lock command, maybe it is
   "xscreensaver-command -lock", or kdesktop_lock, or "dtaction
   LockDisplay"). It will prompt the user at the X display whether to
   accept, reject, or accept view-only the client, but if the prompt
   times out after 60 seconds the screen is locked and the VNC client is
   accepted. This allows the remote access when no one is at the display.
#!/bin/sh
#
# accept_or_lock: prompt user at X display whether to accept an incoming
#                 VNC connection.  If timeout expires, screen is locked
#                 and the VNC viewer is accepted (allows remote access
#                 when no one is sitting at the display).
#
# usage: x11vnc ... -forever -accept 'yes:0,no:*,view:4 accept_or_lock'
#
xmessage -buttons yes:2,no:3,view-only:4 -center \
         -timeout 60 "x11vnc: accept connection from $RFB_CLIENT_IP?"
rc=$?
if [ $rc = 0 ]; then
        xlock &
        sleep 5
        exit 0
elif [ $rc = 2 ]; then
        exit 0
elif [ $rc = 4 ]; then
        exit 4
fi
exit 1

1864
   Stefan Radman has written a nice dtksh script [232]dtVncPopup for use
1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870
   in CDE environments to do the same sort of thing. Information on how
   to use it is found at the top of the file. He encourages you to
   provide feedback to him to help improve the script.

   Note that in all cases x11vnc will block while the external command or
   popup is being run, so attached clients will not receive screen
runge's avatar
runge committed
1871
   updates, etc during this period.
1872

1873
   To run a command when a client disconnects, use the "[233]-gone
1874 1875
   command" option. This is for the user's convenience only: the return
   code of the command is not interpreted by x11vnc. The same environment
1876 1877
   variables are set as in "-accept command" (except that RFB_MODE will
   be "gone").
1878

runge's avatar
runge committed
1879
   Q-32: Does x11vnc support Unix usernames and passwords? Can I further
1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885
   limit the set of Unix usernames who can connect to the VNC desktop?

   Until the VNC protocol and libvncserver support this things will be
   approximate at best. Hopefully, it will not be too long to wait for
   such support.

1886
   One approximate method involves starting x11vnc with the
1887
   [234]-localhost option. This basically requires the viewer user to log
1888 1889 1890 1891 1892
   into the workstation where x11vnc is running via their Unix username
   and password, and then somehow set up a port redirection of his
   vncviewer connection to make it appear to emanate from the local
   machine. As discussed above, ssh is useful for this: ssh -l username
   -L 5900:localhost:5900 hostname ... See the ssh wrapper scripts
1893
   mentioned [235]elsewhere on this page. Of course a malicious user
1894 1895 1896 1897
   could allow other users to get in through his channel, but that is a
   problem with every method. Another thing to watch out for is a
   malicious user on the viewer side (where ssh is running) trying to
   sneak in through the ssh port redirection.
1898 1899 1900 1901

   Regarding limiting the set of Unix usernames who can connect, the
   traditional way would be to further require a VNC password to supplied
   (-rfbauth, -passwd, etc). A scheme that avoids a second password
1902
   involves using the [236]-accept option that runs a program to examine
1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910
   the connection information to determine which user is connecting from
   the local machine. For example, the program could use the ident
   service on the local machine (normally ident should not be trusted
   over the network, but on the local machine it should be accurate:
   otherwise root has been compromised and so there are more serious
   problems!). An example script passed in via -accept scriptname that
   deduces the Unix username and limits who can be accepted might look
   something like this:
1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$RFB_CLIENT_IP" != "127.0.0.1" -o "$RFB_SERVER_IP" != "127.0.0.1" ]; then
        exit 1  # something fishy... reject it.
fi
user=`echo "$RFB_CLIENT_PORT, $RFB_SERVER_PORT" | nc -w 1 $RFB_CLIENT_IP 113 \
        | grep 'USERID.*UNIX' | head -1 | sed -e 's/[\r ]//g' | awk -F: '{print
 $4}'`

for okuser in fred barney wilma betty
do
        if [ "X$user" = "X$okuser" ]; then
                exit 0  # accept it
        fi
done
exit 1  # reject it

   For this to work with ssh port redirection, the ssh option
   UsePrivilegeSeparation must be enabled.

runge's avatar
runge committed
1930
   Q-33: I start x11vnc as root because it is launched via inetd(1) or a
1931 1932
   display manager like gdm(1). Can I have x11vnc later switch to a
   different user?
1933

1934
   As of Feb/2005 x11vnc has the [237]-users option that allows things
1935 1936 1937 1938 1939
   like this. Please read the documentation on it (in the x11vnc -help
   output) carefully for features and caveats. It's use can often
   decrease security unless care is taken. A nice use of it is "-users
   +nobody" that switches to the Unix user nobody right after connections
   to the X display are established.
1940

runge's avatar
runge committed
1941
   Q-34: I use a screen-lock when I leave my workstation (e.g.
1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953
   xscreensaver or xlock). When I remotely access my workstation desktop
   via x11vnc I can unlock the desktop fine, but I am worried people will
   see my activities on the physical monitor. What can I do to prevent
   this, or at least make it more difficult?

   Probably most work environments would respect your privacy if you
   powered off the monitor. Also remember if people have physical access
   to your workstation they basically can do anything they want with it
   (e.g. install a backdoor for later use, etc).

   In any event, as of Jun/2004 there is an experimental utility to make
   it more difficult for nosey people to see your x11vnc activities. The
1954
   source for it is [238]blockdpy.c The idea behind it is simple (but
1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
   obviously not bulletproof): when a VNC client attaches to x11vnc put
   the display monitor in the DPMS "off" state, if the DPMS state ever
   changes immediately start up the screen-lock program. The x11vnc user
   will notice something is happening and think about what to do next
   (while the screen is in a locked state).

   This works (or at least has a chance of working) because if the
   intruder moves the mouse or presses a key on the keyboard, the monitor
   wakes up out of the DPMS off state, and this induces the screen lock
   program to activate as soon as possible. Of course there are cracks in
   this, the eavesdropper could detach your monitor and insert a non-DPMS
   one, and there are race conditions. As mentioned above this is not
   bulletproof. A really robust solution would likely require X server
   and perhaps even video hardware support.

1970 1971
   The blockdpy utility is launched by the [239]-accept option and told
   to exit via the [240]-gone option (the vnc client user should
1972 1973
   obviously re-lock the screen before disconnecting!). Instructions can
   be found in the source code for the utility at the above link.
1974

runge's avatar
runge committed
1975
   Q-35: Can I have x11vnc automatically lock the screen when I
1976 1977
   disconnect the VNC viewer?

1978
   Yes, a user mentions he uses the [241]-gone option under CDE to run a
1979
   screen lock program:
1980
  x11vnc -display :0 -forever -gone 'dtaction LockDisplay'
1981 1982

   Other possibilities are:
1983 1984 1985
  x11vnc -display :0 -forever -gone 'xscreensaver-command -lock'
  x11vnc -display :0 -forever -gone 'kdesktop_lock'
  x11vnc -display :0 -forever -gone 'xlock &'
1986 1987


1988
   [Display Managers and Services]
1989

runge's avatar
runge committed
1990
   Q-36: How can I run x11vnc as a "service" that is always available?
1991

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
   There are a number of ways to do this. The primary thing you need to
   decide is whether you want x11vnc to connect to the X session on the
   machine 1) regardless of who (or if anyone) has the X session, or 2)
   only if a certain user has the X session. Because X sessions are
   protected by X permissions (XAUTHORITY and $HOME/.Xauthority) the
   automatically started x11vnc will of course need to have sufficient
1998
   permissions to connect to the X display.
1999

2000
   Here are some ideas:
2001
     * Use the description under "Continuously" in the [242]FAQ on x11vnc
2002
       and Display Managers
2003
     * Use the description in the [243]FAQ on x11vnc and inetd(1)
2004
     * Start x11vnc from your $HOME/.xsession (or $HOME/.xinitrc)
2005
     * Although less reliable, see the [244]x11vnc_loop rc.local hack
2006
       below.
2007

2008 2009
   The display manager scheme will not be specific to which user has the
   X session unless a test is specifically put into the display startup
2010 2011 2012
   script (often named Xsetup). The inetd(1) scheme may or may not be
   specific to which user has the X session (and it may not be able to do
   all users via the XAUTHORITY permission issues).
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

   The $HOME/.xsession scheme is obviously is specific to a particular
   user. If you do not know what a $HOME/.xsession script is or how to
   use one, perhaps your desktop has a "session startup commands"
   configuration option. The command to be run in the .xsession or
   .xinitrc file may look like this:
x11vnc -logfile $HOME/.x11vnc.log -rfbauth $HOME/.vnc/passwd -forever -bg
2020

2021 2022
   plus any other options you desire.

runge's avatar
runge committed
2023
   Q-37: How can I use x11vnc to connect to an X login screen like xdm,
2024 2025
   GNOME gdm, KDE kdm, or CDE dtlogin? (i.e. nobody is logged into an X
   session yet).
2026 2027

   One time only.   If the X login screen is running and you just want to
2028
   connect to it once (i.e. a one-shot):
2029

2030 2031
   It is usually possible to do this by just adjusting the XAUTHORITY
   environment variable to point to the correct MIT-COOKIE auth file
2032
   while running x11vnc as root, e.g. for the gnome display manager, gdm:
2033 2034
  x11vnc -auth /var/gdm/:0.Xauth -display :0

2035 2036 2037 2038 2039
   (the [245]-auth option sets the XAUTHORITY variable for you).

   There will be a similar thing for xdm using however a different auth
   directory path (perhaps something like
   /var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-XQvaJk for xdm or
2040
   /var/lib/kdm/A:0-crWk72 for kdm, where the random characters in
2041 2042 2043 2044 2045
   basename will vary a bit). Read your system docs to find out where the
   display manager cookie files are kept.

   Trick: sometimes ps(1) can reveal the X server process -auth argument
   (e.g. "ps wwwwaux | grep auth").
2046

2047 2048
   You next connect to x11vnc with a VNC viewer, give your username and
   password to the X login prompt to start your session.
2049

2050 2051
   Note:  gdm seems to have an annoying setting that causes x11vnc (and
   any other X clients) to be killed after the user logs in. Setting
2052 2053 2054
   KillInitClients=false in the [daemon] section of /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf
   avoids this. Otherwise, just restart x11vnc and then reconnect your
   viewer.
2055

2056 2057 2058 2059 2060 2061
   Note:  For dtlogin in addition to the above sort of trick (BTW, the
   auth file should be in /var/dt), you'll also need to add something
   like Dtlogin*grabServer:False to the Xconfig file
   (/etc/dt/config/Xconfig or /usr/dt/config/Xconfig on Solaris, see
   [246]the example at the end of this FAQ). Then restart dtlogin, e.g.:
   /etc/init.d/dtlogin stop; /etc/init.d/dtlogin start or reboot.
2062 2063 2064 2065 2066 2067

   Continuously.   Have x11vnc reattach each time the X server is
   restarted (i.e. after each logout):

   To make x11vnc always attached to the the X server (please consider
   the security implications of this!) including the login screen you
2068
   will need to add a command to a display manager startup script. The
2069
   name of the script file depends on desktop used and seem to be:
2070
        GNOME        /etc/X11/gdm/Init/Default  (or Init/:0)
2071
        KDE          /etc/kde*/kdm/Xsetup
2072
        XDM          /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup        (or xdm/Xsetup_0)
2073 2074 2075 2076
        CDE          /etc/dt/config/Xsetup

   although the exact location can depend on operating system and
   distribution. See the documentation for your display manager:  gdm(1),
2077 2078 2079 2080 2081 2082 2083 2084 2085
   kdm(1), xdm(1), dtlogin(1) for additional details. There may also be
   display number specific scripts: e.g. Xsetup_0 vs. Xsetup, you need to
   watch out for.

   Note:  The above gdm setting of KillInitClients=false in
   /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf is needed here as well.

   Note:  The above Dtlogin*grabServer:False step will be needed for
   dtlogin here as well.
2086 2087 2088

   In any event, the line you will add to the display manager script will
   look something like:
2089 2090 2091 2092
  /usr/local/bin/x11vnc -rfbauth /path/to/the/vnc/passwd -o /tmp/x11vnc.log -fo
rever -bg

   where you should customize the exact command to your needs.
2093

2094 2095 2096
   Happy, happy, joy, joy:  Note that we do not need to specify -display
   or -auth because happily they are already set for us in the DISPLAY
   and XAUTHORITY environment variables for the Xsetup script!!!
2097

2098 2099
   You may also want to force the VNC port with something like "-rfbport
   5900"
2100
     _________________________________________________________________
2101

2102 2103
   Fedora/gdm: Here is an example of what we did on a vanilla install of
   Fedora-C3 (seems to use gdm by default). Add a line like this to
2104
   /etc/X11/gdm/Init/:0
2105 2106
  /usr/local/bin/x11vnc -rfbauth /etc/x11vnc.passwd -forever -bg -o /tmp/x11vnc
.log
2107 2108 2109 2110 2111 2112 2113

   And then add this line to /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf in the [daemon]
   section:
  KillInitClients=false

   Then restart: /usr/sbin/gdm-restart (or reboot). The
   KillInitClients=false setting is important: without it x11vnc will be
2114
   killed immediately after the user logs in. Here are [247]full details
2115
   on how to configure gdm
2116
     _________________________________________________________________
2117

2118 2119
   Solaris/dtlogin: Here is an example of what we did on a vanilla
   install of Solaris:
2120 2121 2122 2123 2124 2125 2126 2127 2128 2129 2130 2131 2132 2133 2134 2135 2136 2137 2138 2139 2140 2141 2142
   Make the directory /etc/dt/config:
  mkdir -p /etc/dt/config

   Copy over the Xconfig file for customization:
  cp /usr/dt/config/Xconfig /etc/dt/config/Xconfig

   Edit /etc/dt/config/Xconfig and uncomment the line:
  Dtlogin*grabServer:        False

   Next, copy over Xsetup for customization:
  cp /usr/dt/config/Xsetup /etc/dt/config/Xsetup

   Edit /etc/dt/config/Xsetup and at the bottom put a line like:
  /usr/local/bin/x11vnc -forever -o /var/tmp/x11vnc.log -bg

   (tweaked to your local setup and preferences, a password via -rfbauth,
   etc. would be a very good idea).

   Restart the X server and dtlogin:
  /etc/init.d/dtlogin stop
  /etc/init.d/dtlogin start

   (or reboot or maybe just restart the X session).
2143 2144
     _________________________________________________________________

2145 2146 2147 2148 2149 2150 2151 2152
   KDM: One user running the kdm display manager reports putting this
   line:
  x11vnc -forever -rfbauth /home/xyz/.vnc/passwd -bg -o /tmp/x11vnc.log

   in /etc/kde/kdm/Xsetup. After rebooting the system it all seemed to
   work fine.
     _________________________________________________________________

2153 2154

   If you do not want to deal with any display manager startup scripts,
2155
   here is a kludgey script that can be run manually or out of a boot
2156
   file like rc.local: [248]x11vnc_loop It will need some local
2157
   customization before running. Because the XAUTHORITY auth file must be
2158 2159
   guessed by this script, use of the display manager script method
   described above is greatly preferred.
2160

2161
   If the machine is a traditional Xterminal you may want to read
2162
   [249]this FAQ.
2163

runge's avatar
runge committed
2164
   Q-38: Can I run x11vnc out of inetd(1)? How about xinetd(1)?
2165 2166 2167 2168 2169 2170

   Yes, perhaps a line something like this in /etc/inetd.conf will do it
   for you:

  5900 stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/x11vnc_sh

2171
   where the shell script /usr/local/bin/x11vnc_sh uses the [250]-inetd
2172 2173
   option and looks something like (you'll need to customize to your
   settings).
2174
#!/bin/sh
2175
/usr/local/bin/x11vnc -inetd -display :0 -auth /home/fred/.Xauthority \
2176 2177 2178 2179 2180 2181 2182 2183 2184 2185 2186 2187 2188 2189
        -rfbauth /home/fred/.vnc/passwd -o /tmp/x11vnc_sh.log

   Important:  Note that you must redirect the standard error output to a
   log file (e.g. -o file) or to /dev/null for proper operation via inetd
   (otherwise the standard error also goes to the VNC vncviewer, and that
   confuses it greatly). If you do not use a wrapper script as above but
   rather call x11vnc directly in /etc/inetd.conf and do not redirect
   stderr to a file, then you must specify the -q (aka [251]-quiet)
   option: "/usr/local/bin/x11vnc -q -inetd ..." or use "-o logfile" to
   collect the output in a file. The wrapper script with redirection to a
   log file is the recommended method because the errors and warnings
   printed out are very useful in troubleshooting problems.

   Note also the need to set XAUTHORITY via [252]-auth to point to the
2190 2191 2192 2193
   MIT-COOKIE auth file to get permission to connect to the X display
   (setting and exporting the XAUTHORITY variable accomplishes the same
   thing). See the x11vnc_loop file in the previous question for more
   ideas on what that auth file may be, etc.
2194

2195 2196 2197
   Note:  On Solaris you cannot have the bare number 5900 in
   /etc/inetd.conf, you'll need to replace it with a word like x11vnc an
   then put something like "x11vnc 5900/tcp" in /etc/services.
2198 2199 2200 2201 2202 2203 2204 2205 2206 2207 2208 2209 2210

   Be sure to look at your /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny settings
   to limit the machines that can connect to this service (your
   desktop!). For the above example with /etc/hosts.allow:
  x11vnc_sh : 123.45.67.89

   A really safe way to do things is to limit the above inetd to
   localhost only (via /etc/hosts.allow) and use ssh to tunnel the
   incoming connection. Using inetd for this prevents there being a tiny
   window of opportunity between x11vnc starting up and your vncviewer
   connecting to it. Always use a VNC password to further protect against
   unwanted access.

2211 2212 2213 2214 2215 2216 2217 2218 2219 2220 2221 2222 2223 2224 2225 2226 2227 2228 2229 2230 2231
   For xinetd(1), one user reports he created the file
   /etc/xinetd.d/x11vncservice containing the following:
# default: off
# description:
service x11vncservice
{
        flags           = REUSE NAMEINARGS
        port            = 5900
        type            = UNLISTED
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        wait            = no
        user            = root
        server          = /usr/sbin/tcpd
        server_args     = /usr/local/bin/x11vnc_sh
        disable         = no
}

   With the contents of /usr/local/bin/x11vnc_sh similar to the example
   given above.

runge's avatar
runge committed
2232
   Q-39: How do I make x11vnc work with the Java VNC viewer applet in a
2233 2234 2235
   web browser?

   To have x11vnc serve up a Java VNC viewer applet to any web browsers
2236
   that connect to it, run x11vnc with this [253]option:
2237 2238 2239 2240 2241 2242 2243 2244 2245 2246 2247 2248 2249 2250 2251 2252 2253 2254 2255 2256 2257 2258
  -httpdir /path/to/the/java/classes/dir

   (this directory will contain the files index.vnc and, for example,
   VncViewer.jar) Note that libvncserver contains the TightVNC Java
   classes jar file for your convenience. (it is the file
   classes/VncViewer.jar in the source tree).

   You will see output something like this:
  14/05/2004 11:13:56 Autoprobing selected port 5900
  14/05/2004 11:13:56 Listening for HTTP connections on TCP port 5800
  14/05/2004 11:13:56   URL http://walnut:5800
  14/05/2004 11:13:56 screen setup finished.
  14/05/2004 11:13:56 The VNC desktop is walnut:0
  PORT=5900

   then you can connect to that URL with any Java enabled browser. Feel
   free to customize the default index.vnc file in the classes directory.

   Note that if you wanted to, you could also start the Java viewer
   entirely from the viewer-side by having the jar file there and using
   either the java or appletviewer commands to run the program.

runge's avatar
runge committed
2259
   Q-40: Are reverse connections (i.e. the VNC server connecting to the
2260
   VNC viewer) using "vncviewer -listen" and vncconnect(1) supported?
2261

2262 2263
   As of Mar/2004 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc supports reverse
   connections. On Unix one starts the VNC viewer in listen mode:
runge's avatar
runge committed
2264
   vncviewer -listen (see your documentation for Windows, etc), and then
2265
   starts up x11vnc with the [254]-connect option. To connect immediately
runge's avatar
runge committed
2266 2267 2268 2269 2270
   at x11vnc startup time use the "-connect host:port" option (use commas
   for a list of hosts to connect to). The ":port" is optional (default
   is 5500). If a file is specified instead: -connect /path/to/some/file
   then that file is checked periodically (about once a second) for new
   hosts to connect to.
2271

2272
   To use the vncconnect(1) program (from the core VNC package at
2273
   www.realvnc.com) specify the [255]-vncconnect option to x11vnc (Note:
2274
   as of Dec/2004 -vncconnect is now the default). vncconnect(1) must be
2275 2276 2277 2278 2279 2280 2281 2282 2283 2284
   pointed to the same X11 DISPLAY as x11vnc (since it uses X properties
   to communicate with x11vnc). If you do not have or do not want to get
   the vncconnect(1) program, the following script (named "Vncconnect")
   may work if your xprop(1) supports the -set option:
#!/bin/sh
# usage: Vncconnect <host>
#        Vncconnect <host:port>
# note: not all xprop(1) support -set.
#
xprop -root -f VNC_CONNECT 8s -set VNC_CONNECT "$1"
2285

2286 2287 2288 2289 2290 2291 2292 2293 2294 2295 2296 2297 2298 2299 2300 2301 2302 2303 2304 2305 2306 2307 2308 2309 2310 2311 2312 2313 2314 2315 2316 2317 2318 2319 2320 2321 2322 2323 2324 2325 2326 2327 2328 2329 2330 2331 2332 2333 2334 2335 2336 2337 2338
   Q-41: Can I use x11vnc as a replacement for Xvnc? (i.e. not for a real
   display, but for a virtual one I keep around).

   You can, but you would not be doing this for performance reasons (for
   virtual X sessions, Xvnc will give the fastest response). You may want
   to do this because Xvnc does not support an X server extension you
   desire, or you want to take advantage of one of x11vnc's unending
   number of options and features.

   One way to acheive this is to have a Xvfb(1) virtual framebuffer X
   server running in the background and have x11vnc attached to it. One
   could view this desktop both remotely and locally using vncviewer.
   Make sure vncviewer's "-encodings raw" is in effect for local viewing
   (compression seems to slow things down locally).

   Here is one way to start up Xvfb:
  xinit -- /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1024x768x16

   This starts up a 16bpp virtual display. To export it via VNC use
   "x11vnc -display :1 ...".

   One good thing about Xvfb is that the virtual framebuffer exists in
   main memory (rather than in the video hardware), and so x11vnc can
   "screen scrape" it efficiently (more than, say, 100X faster than
   normal video hardware).

   There are some annoyances WRT Xvfb though. The default keyboard
   mapping seems to be very poor. One should run x11vnc with
   [256]-add_keysyms option to have keysyms added automatically. Also, to
   add the Shift_R and Control_R modifiers something like this is needed:
#!/bin/sh
xmodmap -e "keycode any = Shift_R"
xmodmap -e "add Shift = Shift_L Shift_R"
xmodmap -e "keycode any = Control_R"
xmodmap -e "add Control = Control_L Control_R"

   Perhaps the Xvfb options -xkbdb or -xkbmap could be used to get a
   better default keyboard mapping.

   One can use this sort of scheme to export other virtual X sessions,
   say Xnest or even Xvnc itself (useful for testing x11vnc).


   Another application of x11vnc in this vein is to let it export
   displays of "headless" machines. For example, you may have some server
   machines with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, but it still has a video
   card. An X server can be started on the headless machine (sometimes
   this requires configuring the X server to not fail if it cannot detect
   a keyboard or mouse). Then you can export that X display via x11vnc
   (e.g. see [257]this FAQ). This can be quite useful for a GUI (or
   other) testing setups: the engineers do not need to walk to machines
   running different hardware, OS's, etc. They just connect to the test
   machines over the network via VNC.
2339

2340
   [Resource Usage and Performance]
2341

2342
   Q-42: I have lots of memory, but why does x11vnc fail with    shmget:
2343 2344 2345 2346 2347 2348 2349 2350 2351 2352 2353 2354 2355 2356 2357 2358 2359
   No space left on device    or    Minor opcode of failed request: 1
   (X_ShmAttach)?

   It is not a matter of free memory, but rather free shared memory (shm)
   slots, also known as shm segments. This often occurs on a public
   Solaris machine using the default of only 100 slots. You (or the owner
   or root) can clean them out with ipcrm(1). x11vnc tries hard to
   release its slots, but it, and other programs, are not always able to
   (e.g. if kill -9'd).

   Sometimes x11vnc will notice the problem with shm segments and tries
   to get by with fewer, only giving a warning like this:
  19/03/2004 10:10:58 shmat(tile_row) failed.
  shmat: Too many open files
  19/03/2004 10:10:58 error creating tile-row shm for len=4
  19/03/2004 10:10:58 reverting to single_copytile mode

2360
   Here is a shell script [258]shm_clear to list and prompt for removal
2361
   of your unattached shm segments (attached ones are skipped). I use it
2362
   while debugging x11vnc (I use "shm_clear -y" to assume "yes" for each
2363 2364 2365 2366 2367 2368 2369 2370 2371 2372 2373 2374 2375 2376 2377 2378 2379 2380 2381 2382 2383 2384 2385 2386 2387 2388 2389 2390 2391 2392 2393
   prompt). If x11vnc is regularly not cleaning up its shm segments,
   please contact me so we can work to improve the situation.

   Longer term, on Solaris you can put something like this in
   /etc/system:
  set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax = 0x2000000
  set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni = 0x1000

   to sweep the problem under the rug (4096 slots). On Linux, examine
   /proc/sys/kernel/shmmni; you can modify the value by writing to that
   file.

   Things are even more tight on Solaris 8 and earlier, there is a
   default maximum number of shm segments per process of 6. The error is
   the X server (not x11vnc) being unable to attach to the segments, and
   looks something like this:
  30/04/2004 14:04:26 Got connection from client 192.168.1.23
  30/04/2004 14:04:26   other clients:
  X Error of failed request:  BadAccess (attempt to access private resource den
ied)
     Major opcode of failed request:  131 (MIT-SHM)
     Minor opcode of failed request:  1 (X_ShmAttach)
     Serial number of failed request:  14
     Current serial number in output stream:  17

   This tight limit on Solaris 8 can be increased via:
  set shmsys:shminfo_shmseg = 100

   in /etc/system. See the next paragraph for more workarounds.

   To minimize the number of shm segments used by x11vnc try using the
2394
   [259]-onetile option (corresponds to only 3 shm segments used, and
2395 2396
   adding -fs 1.0 knocks it down to 2). If you are having much trouble
   with shm segments, consider disabling shm completely via the
2397
   [260]-noshm option. Performance will be somewhat degraded but when
2398
   done over local machine sockets it should be acceptable (see an
2399
   [261]earlier question discussing -noshm).
2400

2401
   Q-43: How can I make x11vnc use less system resources?
2402

2403
   The [262]-nap and "[263]-wait n" (where n is the sleep between polls
2404
   in milliseconds, the default is 30 or so) option are good places to
2405 2406
   start. Reducing the X server bits per pixel depth (e.g. to 16bpp or
   even 8bpp) will further decrease memory I/O and network I/O. Using the
2407 2408
   [264]-onetile option will use less memory and use fewer shared memory
   slots (add [265]-fs 1.0 for one less slot).
2409

2410
   Q-44: How can I make x11vnc use MORE system resources?
2411

2412 2413
   You can try [266]-threads and dial down the wait time (e.g. -wait 1)
   and possibly dial down [267]-defer as well. Note that if you try to
2414 2415 2416
   increase the "frame rate" too much you can bog down the server end
   with the extra work it needs to do compressing the framebuffer data,
   etc.
2417 2418 2419

   That said, it is possible to "stream" video via x11vnc if the video
   window is small enough. E.g. a 256x192 xawtv TV capture window (using
2420
   the x11vnc [268]-id option) can be streamed over a LAN or wireless at
2421
   a reasonable frame rate.
2422

2423
   Q-45: I use x11vnc over a slow link with high latency (e.g. dialup
2424 2425 2426 2427 2428 2429 2430 2431 2432 2433
   modem), is there anything I can do to speed things up?

   Some things you might want to experiment with (most of which will help
   performance on faster links as well):

     X server/session parameters:
     * Configure the X server bits per pixel to 16bpp or even 8bpp.
       (reduces amount of data needed to be sent)
     * Use a smaller desktop size (e.g. 1024x768 instead of 1280x1024)
     * Make sure the desktop background is a solid color (the background
2434
       is resent every time it is re-exposed). Consider using the
2435
       [269]-solid [color] option.
2436 2437 2438 2439 2440
     * Configure your window manager or desktop "theme" to not use fancy
       images, shading, and gradients for the window decorations, etc.
       Disable Opaque moves, resizes, and animations.
     * Avoid small scrolls of large windows using the Arrow keys or
       scrollbar. Try to use PageUp/PageDown instead.
2441 2442 2443
     * Turn off Anti-aliased fonts on your system, web browser,
       terminals, etc. AA fonts do not compress as well as traditional
       fonts.
2444 2445 2446 2447 2448 2449 2450
     * On XFree86 turn on the Shadow Framebuffer to speed up reading.
       (Option "ShadowFB" "true", and possibly Option "NoAccel" "true" as
       well, in the Device section of /etc/X11/XF86Config) This disables
       2D acceleration on the physical display and so is probably not
       worth it, but could be of use in some situations.

     VNC viewer parameters:
2451
     * Use a [270]TightVNC enabled viewer!
2452 2453 2454 2455 2456 2457 2458 2459 2460 2461 2462 2463 2464 2465 2466 2467 2468
     * Make sure the tight encoding is being used (look at vncviewer and
       x11vnc outputs)
     * Request 8 bits per pixel using -bgr233 (up to 4X speedup over
       depth 24 TrueColor (32bpp), but colors will be off)
     * The -depth option is similar to -bgr233 in reducing the requested
       number of bits per pixel.
     * Try increasing the TightVNC -compresslevel (compresses more on
       server side before sending, but uses more CPU)
     * Try reducing the TightVNC -quality (increases JPEG compression,
       but is lossy)
     * Try other VNC encodings via -encodings (tight is probably fastest,
       but you should check)
     * On the machine where vncviewer is run, make sure Backing Store is
       enabled (XFree86 disables it by default causing re-exposures of
       vncviewer to be very slow)

     x11vnc parameters:
2469
     * Try using [271]-nodragging (no screen updates when dragging mouse,
2470
       but sometimes you miss visual feedback)
2471
     * Try the [272]-progressive pixelheight mode with the block
2472 2473
       pixelheight 100 or so (delays sending vertical blocks since they
       may change while viewer is receiving earlier ones)
2474 2475
     * Set [273]-fs 1.0 (disables fullscreen updates)
     * Try increasing [274]-wait or [275]-defer (reduces the maximum
2476
       "frame rate", but won't help much for large screen changes)
2477
     * If you just want to watch one (simple) window use [276]-id (cuts
2478 2479
       down extraneous polling and updates, but can be buggy or
       insufficient)
2480 2481
     * Set [277]-nosel (disables all clipboard selection exchange)
     * Use [278]-nocursor and [279]-nocursorpos (repainting the remote
2482 2483
       cursor position and shape takes resources and round trips)

2484
   Q-46: When I drag windows around with the mouse or scroll up and down
2485 2486 2487 2488 2489 2490 2491
   things really bog down (unless I do the drag in a single, quick
   motion). Is there anything to do to improve things?

   As of Jan/2004 there are some improvements in the libvncserver CVS
   tree. The default should now be much better than before and dragging
   small windows around should no longer be a huge pain. If for some
   reason these changes make matters worse, you can go back to the old
2492
   way via the "[280]-pointer_mode 1" option.
2493

2494
   Also added was the [281]-nodragging option that disables all screen
2495 2496 2497
   updates while dragging with the mouse (i.e. mouse motion with a button
   held down). This gives the snappiest response, but might be undesired
   in some circumstances when you want to see the visual feedback while
2498 2499
   dragging (e.g. menu traversal or text selection).

2500
   As of Dec/2004 in the libvncserver CVS the [282]-pointer_mode n option
2501 2502
   was introduced. n=1 is the original mose, n=2 and improvement, etc..
   See the -pointer_mode n help for more info.
2503

2504
   Also, in some circumstances the [283]-threads option can improve
2505 2506 2507 2508 2509
   response considerably. Be forewarned that if more than one vncviewer
   is connected at the same time then libvncserver may not be thread safe
   (try to get the viewers to use different VNC encodings, e.g. tight and
   ZRLE).

2510
   Q-47: Does x11vnc support the X DAMAGE Xserver extension to find
2511 2512 2513 2514 2515 2516 2517 2518 2519 2520 2521 2522 2523 2524 2525 2526 2527 2528 2529 2530 2531 2532 2533 2534 2535 2536 2537 2538 2539 2540 2541 2542 2543
   modified regions of the screen quickly and efficiently?

   Yes, as of Mar/2005 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc will use the X
   DAMAGE extension by default if it is available on the display. This
   requires libXdamage to be available in the build environment as well
   (recent Linux distros and Solaris 10 have it).

   The DAMAGE extension enables the X server to report changed regions of
   the screen back to x11vnc. So x11vnc doesn't have to guess where the
   changes are (by polling the entire screen every 1 or 2 seconds). The
   use of X DAMAGE dramatically reduces the load when the screen is not
   changing very much (i.e. most of the time). It also noticeably
   improves updates, especially for very small changed areas (e.g. clock
   ticking, cursor flashing, typing, etc).

   Note that the DAMAGE extension does not speed up the actual reading of
   pixels from the video card framebuffer memory, by, say, mirroring them
   in main memory. So reading the fb is still painfully slow (e.g.
   5MB/sec), and so even using X DAMAGE when large changes occur on the
   screen the bulk of the time is still spent retrieving them.

   Unfortunately the current Xorg DAMAGE extension implementation can at
   times be overly cautious and report very large rectangles as "damaged"
   even though only a small portion of the pixels have actually been
   modified. This behavior is often the fault of the window manager (e.g.
   it redraws the entire, unseen, frame window underneath the application
   window when it gains focus), or the application itself (e.g. does
   large, unnecessary repaints).

   To work around this deficiency, x11vnc currently only trusts small
   DAMAGE rectangles to contain real damage. The larger rectangles are
   only used as hints to direct the traditional scanline polling (i.e. if
   a scanline doesn't intersect a recent DAMAGE rectangle, the scan is
2544
   skipped). You can use the "[284]-xd_area A" option to adjust the size
2545 2546 2547 2548
   of the trusted DAMAGE rectangles. The default is 20000 pixels (e.g. a
   140x140 square, etc). Use "-xd_area 0" to disable the cutoff and trust
   all DAMAGE rectangles.

2549 2550
   The option "[285]-xd_mem f" may also be of use in tuning the
   algorithm. To disable using DAMAGE entirely use "[286]-noxdamage".
2551

2552 2553
   [Mouse Cursor Shapes]

2554
   Q-48: Why isn't the mouse cursor shape (the little icon shape where
2555 2556
   the mouse pointer is) correct as I move from window to window?

2557 2558
   On X servers supporting XFIXES or Solaris/IRIX Overlay extensions it
   is possible for x11vnc to do this correctly. See the paragraphs below.
2559

2560 2561 2562 2563 2564 2565 2566
   Historically, the X11 mouse cursor shape (i.e. little picture: an
   arrow, X, I-beam, resizer, etc) is one of the few write-only objects
   in X11. That is, an application can tell the X server what the cursor
   shape should be when the pointer is in a given window, but a program
   (like x11vnc) unfortunately cannot read this information. I believe
   this is because the cursor shape is often downloaded to the graphics
   hardware (video card), but I could be mistaken.
2567

2568
   A simple kludge is provided by the "[287]-cursor X" option that
2569 2570 2571
   changes the cursor when the mouse is on the root background (or any
   window has the same cursor as the root background). Note that desktops
   like GNOME or KDE often cover up the root background, so this won't
2572
   work for those cases. Also see the "[288]-cursor some" option for
2573
   additional kludges.
2574 2575 2576

   Note that as of Aug/2004 in the libvncserver CVS, on Solaris using the
   SUN_OVL overlay extension and IRIX, x11vnc can show the correct mouse
2577
   cursor when the [289]-overlay option is supplied. See [290]this FAQ
2578
   for more info.
2579 2580 2581

   Also as of Dec/2004 in the libvncserver CVS XFIXES X extension support
   has been added to allow exact extraction of the mouse cursor shape.
2582 2583 2584
   XFIXES fixes the problem of the cursor-shape being write-only: x11vnc
   can now query the X server for the current shape and send it back to
   the connected viewers. XFIXES is available on recent Linux Xorg based
2585
   distros and [291]Solaris 10.
2586 2587 2588 2589 2590 2591 2592

   The only XFIXES issue is the handling of alpha channel transparency in
   cursors. If a cursor has any translucency then in general it must be
   approximated to opaque RGB values. There are some situations where the
   cursor transparency can also handled exactly: when the VNC Viewer
   requires the cursor shape be drawn into the VNC framebuffer or if you
   apply a patch to your VNC Viewer to extract hidden alpha channel data
2593
   under 32bpp. [292]Details can be found here.
2594

2595
   Q-49: When using XFIXES cursorshape mode, some of the cursors look
2596 2597 2598 2599 2600 2601 2602 2603 2604 2605 2606 2607 2608 2609 2610 2611 2612 2613 2614
   really bad with extra black borders around the cursor and other cruft.
   How can I improve their appearance?

   This happens for cursors with transparency ("alpha channel"); regular
   X cursors (bitmaps) should be correct. Unfortunately x11vnc 0.7 was
   released with a very poor algorithm for approximating the
   transparency, which led to the ugly black borders.

   The problem is as follows: XFIXES allows x11vnc to retrieve the
   current X server cursor shape, including the alpha channel for
   transparency. For traditional bitmap cursors the alpha value will be 0
   for completely transparent pixels and 255 for completely opaque
   pixels; whereas for modern, eye-candy cursors an alpha value between 0
   and 255 means to blend in the background colors to that degree with
   the cursor colors. The pixel color blending formula is something like
   this: Red = Red_cursor * a + Red_background * (1 - a), (where here 0
   =< a =< 1), with similar for Green and Blue. The VNC protocol does not
   currently support an alpha channel in cursors: it only supports
   regular X bitmap cursors and Rich Cursors that have RGB (Red, Green,
2615
   Blue) color data, but no "A" = alpha data. So in general x11vnc has to
2616 2617 2618 2619 2620 2621
   approximate a cursor with transparency to create a Rich Cursor. This
   is easier said than done: some cursor themes have cursors with
   complicated drop shadows and other forms of translucency.

   Anyway, for the x11vnc 0.7.1 release the algorithm for approximating
   transparency is much improved and hopefully gives decent cursor shapes
2622
   for most cursor themes and you don't have to worry about it.
2623 2624

   In case it still looks bad for your cursor theme, there are (of
2625
   course!) some tunable parameters. The "[293]-alphacut n" option lets
2626 2627 2628
   you set the threshold "n" (between 0 and 255): cursor pixels with
   alpha values below n will be considered completely transparent while
   values equal to or above n will be completely opaque. The default is
2629
   240. The "[294]-alphafrac f" option tries to correct individual
2630 2631 2632 2633 2634
   cursors that did not fare well with the default -alphacut value: if a
   cursor has less than fraction f (between 0.0 and 1.0) of its pixels
   selected by the default -alphacut, the threshold is lowered until f of
   its pixels are selected. The default fraction is 0.33.

2635
   Finally, there is an option [295]-alpharemove that is useful for
2636 2637 2638 2639 2640 2641
   themes where many cursors are light colored (e.g. "whiteglass").
   XFIXES returns the cursor data with the RGB values pre-multiplied by
   the alpha value. If the white cursors look too grey, specify
   -alpharemove to brighten them by having x11vnc divide out the alpha
   value.

2642
   Q-50: In XFIXES mode, are there any hacks to handle cursor
2643 2644
   transparency ("alpha channel") exactly?

2645 2646 2647 2648 2649
   As of Jan/2005 in the CVS, libvncserver has been modified to allow an
   alpha channel (i.e. RGBA data) for Rich Cursors. So x11vnc can now
   send the alpha channel data to libvncserver. However, this data will
   only be used for VNC clients that do not support the
   CursorShapeUpdates VNC extension (or have disabled it). It can be
2650
   disabled for all clients with the [296]-nocursorshape x11vnc option.
2651 2652 2653
   In this case the cursor is drawn, correctly blended with the
   background, into the VNC framebuffer before being sent out to the
   client. So the alpha blending is done on the x11vnc side. Use the
2654
   [297]-noalphablend option to disable this behavior (always approximate
2655 2656 2657 2658 2659 2660 2661 2662 2663 2664 2665 2666 2667 2668 2669 2670 2671 2672 2673 2674 2675
   transparent cursors with opaque RGB values).

   The CursorShapeUpdates VNC extension complicates matters because the
   cursor shape is sent to the VNC viewers supporting it, and the viewers
   draw the cursor locally. This improves response over slow links. Alpha
   channel data for these locally drawn cursors is not supported by the
   VNC protocol.

   However, in the libvncserver CVS there is a patch to the TightVNC
   viewer to make this work for CursorShapeUpdates under some
   circumstances. This hack is outside of the VNC protocol. It requires
   the screens on both sides to be depth 24 at 32bpp (it uses the extra 8
   bits to secretly hide the cursor alpha channel data). Not only does it
   require depth 24 at 32bpp, but it also currently requires the client
   and server to be of the same endianness (otherwise the hidden alpha
   data gets reset to zero by a libvncserver translation function; we can
   fix this at some point if there is interest). The patch is for the
   TightVNC 1.3dev5 Unix vncviewer and it enables the TightVNC viewer to
   do the cursor alpha blending locally. The patch code should give an
   example on how to change the Windows TightVNC viewer to achieve the
   same thing (send me the patch if you get that working).
2676 2677 2678

   [Mouse Pointer]

2679
   Q-51: Why does the mouse arrow just stay in one corner in my
2680 2681
   vncviewer, whereas my cursor (that does move) is just a dot?

2682
   This default takes advantage of a [298]tightvnc extension
2683
   (CursorShapeUpdates) that allows specifying a cursor image shape for
2684
   the local VNC viewer. You may disable it with the [299]-nocursor
2685
   option to x11vnc if your viewer does not have this extension.
2686 2687 2688 2689 2690 2691

   Note: as of Aug/2004 in the libvncserver CVS this should be fixed: the
   default for non-tightvnc viewers (or ones that do not support
   CursorShapeUpdates) will be to draw the moving cursor into the x11vnc
   framebuffer. This can also be disabled via -nocursor.

2692
   Q-52: Can I take advantage of the TightVNC extension to the VNC
2693 2694 2695 2696
   protocol where Cursor Positions Updates are sent back to all connected
   clients (i.e. passive viewers can see the mouse cursor being moved
   around by another viewer)?

2697
   Use the [300]-cursorpos option when starting x11vnc. A VNC viewer must
2698 2699
   support the Cursor Positions Updates for the user to see the mouse
   motions (the TightVNC viewers support this). As of Aug/2004 in the
2700 2701
   libvncserver CVS -cursorpos is the default. See also [301]-nocursorpos
   and [302]-nocursorshape. 
2702

2703
   Q-53: Is it possible to swap the mouse buttons (e.g. left-handed
2704 2705 2706
   operation), or arbitrarily remap them? How about mapping button clicks
   to keystrokes, e.g. to partially emulate Mouse wheel scrolling?

2707
   You can remap the mouse buttons via something like: [303]-buttonmap
2708
   13-31 (or perhaps 12-21). Also, note that xmodmap(1) lets you directly
2709 2710 2711 2712 2713 2714
   adjust the X server's button mappings, but in some circumstances it
   might be more desirable to have x11vnc do it.

   One user had an X server with only one mouse button(!) and was able to
   map all of the VNC client mouse buttons to it via: -buttonmap 123-111.

2715
   Note that the [304]-debug_pointer option prints out much info for
2716
   every mouse/pointer event and is handy in solving problems.
2717 2718 2719 2720 2721 2722 2723 2724 2725 2726 2727 2728 2729 2730 2731 2732 2733 2734 2735 2736

   To map mouse button clicks to keystrokes you can use the alternate
   format where the keystrokes are enclosed between colons like this
   :<KeySym>: in place of the mouse button digit. For a sequence of
   keysyms separate them with "+" signs. Look in the include file
   <X11/keysymdef.h>, or use xev(1), or -debug_keyboard to fine the
   keysym names. Button clicks can also be included in the sequence via
   the fake keysyms Button1, etc.

   As an example, suppose the VNC viewer machine has a mouse wheel (these
   generate button 4 and 5 events), but the machine that x11vnc is run on
   only has the 3 regular buttons. In normal operation x11vnc will
   discard the button 4 and 5 events. However, either of the following
   button maps could possibly be of use emulating the mouse wheel events
   in this case:
  -buttonmap 12345-123:Prior::Next:
  -buttonmap 12345-123:Up+Up+Up::Down+Down+Down:

   Exactly what keystroke "scrolling" events they should be bound to
   depends on one's taste. If this method is too approximate, one could
2737
   consider not using [305]-buttonmap but rather configuring the X server
2738
   to think it has a mouse with 5 buttons even though the physical mouse
2739 2740 2741 2742 2743 2744
   does not.

   Note that when a keysym-mapped mouse button is clicked down this
   immediately generates the key-press and key-release events (for each
   keysym in turn if the mapping has a sequence of keysyms). When the
   mouse button goes back up nothing is generated.
2745

2746 2747 2748 2749 2750 2751 2752 2753 2754
   If you include modifier keys like Shift_L instead of key-press
   immediately followed by key-release the state of the modifier key is
   toggled (however the initial state of the modifier key is ignored). So
   to map the right button to type my name 'Karl Runge' I could use this:
  -buttonmap 3-:Shift_L+k+Shift_L+a+r+l+space+Shift_L+r+Shift_L+u+n+g+e:

   (yes, this is getting a little silly).
   [Keyboard Issues]

2755
   Q-54: How can I get my AltGr and Shift modifiers to work between
2756 2757
   keyboards for different languages?

2758
   The option [306]-modtweak should be of some use for this. It is a mode
2759
   that monitors the state of the Shift and AltGr Modifiers and tries to
2760 2761 2762 2763 2764 2765 2766
   deduce the correct keycode to send, possibly by sending fake modifier
   key presses and releases in addition to the actual keystroke.

   Update:  As of Jul/2004 in the libvncserver CVS, -modtweak is now the
   default (use -nomodtweak to get the old behavior). This was done
   because it was noticed on newer XFree86 setups even on bland "us"
   keyboards like "pc104 us" XFree86 included a "ghost" key with both "<"
2767
   and ">" it. This key does not exist on the keyboard (see [307]this FAQ
2768 2769 2770 2771
   for more info). Without -modtweak there was then an ambiguity in the
   reverse map keysym => keycode, making it so the "<" symbol could not
   be typed.

2772
   Also see the [308]FAQ about the -xkb option for a more powerful method
2773 2774 2775
   of modifier tweaking for use on X servers with the XKEYBOARD
   extension.

2776
   When trying to resolve keyboard mapping problems, note that the
2777
   [309]-debug_keyboard option prints out much info for every keystroke
2778
   and so can be useful debugging things.
2779

2780
   Q-55: When I try to type a "<" (i.e. less than) instead I get ">"
2781 2782 2783 2784 2785 2786 2787 2788 2789 2790 2791 2792 2793 2794 2795 2796 2797 2798 2799 2800 2801 2802 2803 2804 2805 2806 2807 2808 2809 2810 2811 2812 2813 2814 2815 2816 2817 2818 2819 2820 2821 2822 2823 2824 2825 2826
   (i.e. greater than)! Strangely, typing ">" works OK!!

   Does your keyboard have a single key with both "<" and ">" on it? Even
   if it doesn't, your X server may think your keyboard has such a key
   (e.g. pc105 in the XF86Config file when it should be something else,
   say pc104).

   The problem here is that on the Xserver where x11vnc is run there are
   two keycodes that correspond to the "<" keysym. Run something like
   this to see:

  xmodmap -pk | egrep -i 'KeyCode|less|greater'
  There are 4 KeySyms per KeyCode; KeyCodes range from 8 to 255.
      KeyCode     Keysym (Keysym) ...
       59         0x002c (comma)  0x003c (less)
       60         0x002e (period) 0x003e (greater)
       94         0x003c (less)   0x003e (greater)

   That keycode 94 is the special key with both "<" and ">". When x11vnc
   receives the "<" keysym over the wire from the remote VNC client, it
   unfortunately maps it to keycode 94 instead of 59, and sends 94 to the
   X server. Since Shift is down (i.e. you are Shifting the comma key),
   the X server interprets this as Shifted-94, which is ">".

   A workaround in the X server configuration is to "deaden" that special
   key:

  xmodmap -e "keycode 94 = "

   However, one user said he had to do this:

  xmodmap -e "keycode 94 = 0x002c 0x003c"

   (If the numerical values are different for your setup, substitute the
   ones that correspond to your display. The above xmodmap scheme can
   often be used to work around other ambiguous keysym to keycode
   mappings).

   Alternatively, here are some x11vnc options to try to work around the
   problem:
   -modtweak

   and
   -remap less-comma

   These are convenient in that they do not modify the actual X server
2827
   settings. The former ([310]-modtweak) is a mode that monitors the
2828 2829
   state of the Shift and AltGr modifiers and tries to deduce the correct
   keycode sequence to send. Since Jul/2004 -modtweak is now the default.
2830
   The latter ([311]-remap less-comma) is an immediate remapping of the
2831 2832
   keysym less to the keysym comma when it comes in from a client (so
   when Shift is down the comma press will yield "<").
2833

2834
   See also the [312]FAQ about the -xkb option as a possible workaround
2835
   using the XKEYBOARD extension.
2836

2837
   Note that the [313]-debug_keyboard option prints out much info for
2838
   every keystroke to aid debugging keyboard problems.
2839

2840
   Q-56: I'm using an "international" keyboard (e.g. German "de", or
2841
   Danish "dk") and the -modtweak mode works well if the VNC viewer is
2842 2843 2844 2845
   run on a Unix/Linux machine with a similar keyboard.   But if I run
   the VNC viewer on Unix/Linux with a different keyboard (e.g. "us") or
   Windows with any keyboard, I can't type some keys like:   "@", "$",
   "<", ">", etc. How can I fix this?
2846 2847 2848 2849 2850 2851 2852 2853 2854 2855 2856 2857 2858 2859 2860

   The problem with Windows is it does not seem to handle AltGr well. It
   seems to fake it up by sending Control_L+Alt_R to applications. The
   Windows VNC viewer sends those two down keystrokes out on the wire to
   the VNC server, but when the user types the next key to get, e.g., "@"
   the Windows VNC viewer sends events bringing the up the
   Control_L+Alt_R keys, and then sends the "@" keysym by itself.

   The Unix/Linux VNC viewer on a "us" keyboard does a similar thing
   since "@" is the Shift of the "2" key. The keysyms Shift and "@" are
   sent to the VNC server.

   In both cases no AltGr is sent to the VNC server, but we know AltGr is
   needed on the physical international keyboard to type a "@".

2861
   This all worked fine with x11vnc running with the [314]-modtweak
2862 2863 2864 2865
   option (it figures out how to adjust the Modifier keys (Shift or
   AltGr) to get the "@"). However it fails under recent versions of
   XFree86 (and the X.org fork). These run the XKEYBOARD extension by
   default and make heavy use of it to handle international keyboards.
2866 2867 2868 2869 2870 2871 2872 2873 2874 2875 2876 2877 2878

   To make a long story short, on these newer XFree86 setups the
   traditional X keymap lookup x11vnc uses is no longer accurate. x11vnc
   can't find the keysym "@" anywhere in the keymapping! (even though it
   is in the XKEYBOARD extended keymapping).

   How to Solve: As of Jul/2004 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc has two
   changes:
     * -modtweak (tweak Modifier keys) is now the default (use
       -nomodtweak to go back to the old way)
     * there is a new option -xkb to use the XKEYBOARD extension API to
       do the Modifier key tweaking.

2879
   The [315]-xkb option seems to fix all of the missing keys: "@", "<",
2880
   ">", etc.: it is recommended that you try it if you have this sort of
2881 2882 2883 2884 2885 2886 2887 2888 2889 2890 2891 2892 2893
   problem. Let us know if there are any remaining problems (see the next
   paragraph for some known problems). If you specify the -debug_keyboard
   (aka -dk) option twice you will get a huge amount of keystroke
   debugging output (send it along with any problems you report).

   Known problems:
     * One user had to disable a "ghost" Mode_switch key that was causing
       problems under -xkb. His physical AltGr key was bound to
       ISO_Level3_Shift (which seems to be the XKEYBOARD way of doing
       things), while there was a ghost key Mode_switch (which seems to
       be obsolete) in the mapping as well. Both of these keysyms were
       bound to Mod5 and x11vnc was unfortunately choosing Mode_switch.
       From the x11vnc -xkb -dk -dk output it was noted that Mode_switch
2894 2895 2896
       was attached to keycode 93 (no physical key generates this
       keycode) while ISO_Level3_Shift was attached to keycode 113. The
       keycode skipping option was used to disable the ghost key:
2897
       [316]-skip_keycodes 93
2898 2899 2900 2901 2902 2903
     * In implementing -xkb we noticed that some characters were still
       not getting through, e.g. "~" and "^". This is not really an
       XKEYBOARD problem. What was happening was the VNC viewer was
       sending the keysyms asciitilde and asciicircum to x11vnc, but on
       the X server with the international keyboard those keysyms were
       not mapped to any keys. So x11vnc had to skip them.
2904 2905 2906 2907 2908 2909 2910 2911 2912 2913
       The way these characters are typically entered on international
       keyboards is by "dead" (aka "mute") keys. E.g. to enter "~" at the
       physical display the keysym dead_tilde is pressed and released
       (this usually involves holding AltGr down while another key is
       pressed) and then space is pressed. (this can also be used get
       characters with the "~" symbol on top, e.g. "ã" by typing "a"
       instead of space).
       What to do? In general the VNC protocol has not really solved this
       problem: what should be done if the VNC viewer sends a keysym not
       recognized by the VNC server side? Workarounds can possibly be
2914
       created using the [317]-remap x11vnc option:
2915 2916 2917
  -remap asciitilde-dead_tilde,asciicircum-dead_circumflex
       etc. Use -remap filename if the list is long. Please send us your
       workarounds for this problem on your keyboard. Perhaps we can have
2918
       x11vnc adjust automatically at some point. Also see the
2919 2920 2921
       [318]-add_keysyms option in the next paragraph.
     * To complement the above workaround using the [319]-remap, an
       option [320]-add_keysyms was added. This option instructs x11vnc
2922 2923 2924 2925 2926 2927 2928
       to bind any unknown Keysyms coming in from VNC viewers to unused
       Keycodes in the X server. This modifies the global state of the X
       server. When x11vnc exits it removes the extra keymappings it
       created. Note that the -remap mappings are applied first, right
       when the Keysym is received from a VNC viewer, and only after that
       would -add_keysyms, or anything else, come into play.

2929
   Q-57: When typing I sometimes get double, triple, or more of my
2930 2931 2932 2933 2934 2935 2936
   keystrokes repeated. I'm sure I only typed them once, what can I do?

   This may be due to an interplay between your X server's key autorepeat
   delay and the extra time delays caused by x11vnc processing.

   Short answer: disable key autorepeating by running the command "xset r
   off" on the Xserver where x11vnc is run (restore via "xset r on") or
2937
   use the new (Jul/2004) [321]-norepeat x11vnc option. You will still
2938 2939 2940
   have autorepeating because that is taken care of on your VNC viewer
   side. Update: as of Dec/2004 -norepeat is now the default. Use -repeat
   to disable it.
2941 2942 2943 2944 2945 2946 2947 2948 2949 2950 2951 2952 2953 2954

   Details: suppose you press a key DOWN and it generates changes in
   large regions of the screen. The CPU and I/O work x11vnc does for the
   large screen change could be longer than your X server's key
   autorepeat delay. x11vnc may not get to processing the key UP event
   until after the screen work is completed. The X server believes the
   key has been held down all this time, and applies its autorepeat
   rules.

   Even without inducing changes in large regions of the screen, this
   problem could arise when accessing x11vnc via a dialup modem or
   otherwise high latency link (e.g. > 250 ms latency).

   Look at the output of "xset q" for the "auto repeat delay" setting. Is
2955 2956 2957 2958
   it low (e.g. < 300 ms)? If you turn off autorepeat completely: "xset r
   off", does the problem go away?

   The workaround is to manually apply "xset r off" and "xset r on" as
2959
   needed, or to use the [322]-norepeat (which has since Dec/2004 been
2960 2961 2962 2963 2964
   made the default). Note that with X server autorepeat turned off the
   VNC viewer side of the connection will (nearly always) do its own
   autorepeating so there is no big loss here, unless someone is also
   working at the physical display and misses his autorepeating.

2965
   Q-58: The x11vnc -norepeat mode is in effect, but I still get repeated
2966 2967
   keystrokes!!

2968
   Are you using x11vnc to log in to an X session? (as described in
2969 2970 2971 2972 2973 2974 2975 2976 2977 2978 2979 2980 2981 2982 2983 2984 2985 2986 2987 2988
   [323]this FAQ) If so, x11vnc is starting before your session and it
   disables autorepeat when you connect, but then after you log in your
   session startup (GNOME, KDE, ...) could be resetting the autorepeat to
   be on. Or it could be something inside your desktop trying to be
   helpful that decides to turn it back on.

   x11vnc in -norepeat mode will by default reset autorepeat to off 2
   times (to help get thru the session startup problem), but it will not
   continue to battle with things turning autorepeat back on. It will
   also turn autorepeat off whenever it goes from a state of zero clients
   to one client. You can adjust the number of resets via "-norepeat N",
   or use "-norepeat -1" to have it keep resetting it whenever autorepeat
   gets turned back on when clients are connected.

   In general you can manually turn autorepeating off by typing "xset r
   off", or a using desktop utility/menu, or "x11vnc -R norepeat". If
   something in your desktop is automatically turning it back on you
   should figure out how to disable that somehow.

   Q-59: The machine where I run x11vnc has an AltGr key, but the local
2989 2990 2991
   machine where I run the VNC viewer does not. Is there a way I can map
   a local unused key to send an AltGr? How about a Compose key as well?

2992
   Something like "[324]-remap Super_R-Mode_switch" x11vnc option may
2993 2994 2995
   work. Note that Super_R is the "Right Windoze(tm) Flaggie" key; you
   may want to choose another. The -debug_keyboard option comes in handy
   in finding keysym names (so does xev(1)).
2996 2997

   For Compose how about "-remap Menu-Multi_key" (note that Multi_key is
2998
   the official name for Compose). To do both at the same time: "-remap
2999 3000 3001
   Super_R-Mode_switch,Menu-Multi_key" or use "-remap filename" to
   specify remappings from a file.

3002
   Q-60: I have a Sun machine I run x11vnc on. Its Sun keyboard has just
3003 3004 3005 3006 3007 3008 3009 3010 3011 3012 3013
   one Alt key labelled "Alt" and two Meta keys labelled with little
   diamonds. The machine where I run the VNC viewer only has Alt keys.
   How can I send a Meta keypress? (e.g. emacs needs this)

   Here are a couple ideas. The first one is to simply use xmodmap(1) to
   adjust the Sun X server. Perhaps xmodmap -e "keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
   Alt_L" will do the trick. (there are other ways to do it, one user
   used: xmodmap -e "keycode 26 = Meta_L" for his setup).

   Since xmodmap(1) modifies the X server mappings you may not want to do
   this (because it affects local work on that machine). Something like
3014
   the [325]-remap Alt_L-Meta_L to x11vnc may be sufficient for ones
3015 3016 3017
   needs, and does not modify the X server environment. Note that you
   cannot send Alt_L in this case, maybe -remap Super_L-Meta_L would be a
   better choice if the Super_L key is typically unused.
3018

3019
   Q-61: Can I map a keystroke to a mouse button click on the remote
3020 3021 3022 3023
   machine?

   This can be done directly in some X servers using AccessX and
   Pointer_EnableKeys, but is a bit awkward. It may be more convenient to
3024
   have x11vnc do the remapping. This can be done via the [326]-remap
3025 3026
   option using the fake "keysyms" Button1, Button2, etc. as the "to"
   keys (i.e. the ones after the "-")
3027

3028 3029 3030 3031
   As an example, consider a laptop where the VNC viewer is run that has
   a touchpad with only two buttons. It is difficult to do a middle
   button "paste" because (using XFree86 Emulate3Buttons) you have to
   click both buttons on the touch pad at the same time. This remapping:
3032
  [327]-remap Super_R-Button2
3033 3034

   maps the Super_R "flag" key press to the Button2 click, thereby making
3035
   X pasting a bit easier.
3036 3037 3038 3039 3040

   Note that once the key goes down, the button down and button up events
   are generated immediately on the x11vnc side. When the key is released
   (i.e. goes up) no events are generated.

3041 3042
   [Screen Related Issues and Features]

3043
   Q-62: The remote display is larger (in number of pixels) than the
3044 3045 3046 3047 3048 3049 3050 3051 3052 3053 3054 3055 3056 3057 3058 3059 3060
   local display I am running the vncviewer on. I don't like the
   vncviewer scrollbars, what I can do?

   vncviewer has a option (usually accessible via F8 key or -fullscreen
   option) for vncviewer to run in full screen, where it will
   automatically scroll when the mouse is near the edge of the current
   view. For quick scrolling, also make sure Backing Store is enabled on
   the machine vncviewer is run on. (XFree86 disables it by default for
   some reason, add Option "backingstore" to XF86Config on the vncviewer
   side).

   BTW, contact me if you are having problems with vncviewer in
   fullscreen mode with your window manager (i.e. no keyboard response).
   I have a workaround for vncviewer using XGrabServer().

   There may also be scaling viewers out there (e.g. TightVNC on Windows)
   that automatically shrink or expand the remote framebuffer to fit the
3061
   local display. Especially for hand-held devices. See also [328]this
3062
   FAQ on x11vnc scaling.
3063

3064
   Q-63: Does x11vnc support server-side framebuffer scaling? (E.g. to
3065 3066 3067 3068
   make the desktop smaller).

   As of Jun/2004 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc provides basic
   server-side scaling. It is a global scaling of the desktop, not a
3069
   per-client setting. To enable it use the "[329]-scale fraction"
3070 3071
   option. "fraction" can either be a floating point number (e.g. -scale
   0.5) or the alternative m/n fraction notation (e.g. -scale 2/3). Note
3072
   that if fraction is greater than one the display is magnified.
3073

3074 3075 3076 3077 3078
   Extra resources (CPU, memory I/O, and memory) are required to do the
   scaling. If the machine is slow where x11vnc is run with scaling
   enabled, the interactive response can be unacceptable. OTOH, if run
   with scaling on a fast machine the performance degradation is usually
   not a big issue or even noticeable.
3079 3080 3081

   Also, if you just want a quick, rough "thumbnail" of the display you
   can append ":nb" to the fraction to turn on "no blending" mode. E.g.:
3082 3083 3084 3085 3086
   "-scale 1/3:nb" Fonts will be difficult to read, but the larger
   features will be recognizable. BTW, "no blending" mode is forced on
   when scaling 8bpp PseudoColor displays (because blending an indexed
   colormap is a bad idea and leads to random colors).

3087 3088 3089 3090 3091 3092
   One can also use the ":nb" with an integer scale factor (say "-scale
   2:nb") to use x11vnc as a screen magnifier for vision impaired
   [330]applications. Since with integer scale factors the framebuffers
   become huge and scaling operations time consuming, be sure to use
   ":nb" for the fastest response.

3093 3094 3095 3096
   In general for a scaled display if you are using a TightVNC viewer you
   may want to turn off jpeg encoding (e.g. vncviewer -nojpeg host:0).
   There appears to be a noise enhancement effect, especially for regions
   containing font/text: the scaling can introduce some pixel artifacts
3097 3098 3099 3100 3101 3102 3103 3104
   that evidently causes the tight encoding algorithm to incorrectly
   detect the regions as image data and thereby introduce additional
   pixel artifacts due to the lossiness of the jpeg compression
   algorithm. Experiment to see if -nojpeg vncviewer option improves the
   readability of text when using -scale to shrink the display size. Also
   note that scaling may actually slow down the transfer of text regions
   because after being scaled they do not compress as well. (this can
   often be a significant slowdown, e.g. 10X).
3105 3106 3107 3108 3109 3110 3111 3112 3113 3114

   Another issue is that it appears VNC viewers require the screen width
   to be a multiple of 4. When scaling x11vnc will round the width to the
   nearest multiple of 4. To disable this use the ":n4" sub option (like
   ":nb" in the previous paragraph; to specify both use a comma:
   ":nb,n4", etc.)

   If one desires per-client scaling for something like 1:1 from a
   workstation and 1:2 from a smaller device (e.g. handheld), currently
   the only option is to run two (or more) x11vnc processes with
3115
   different scalings listening on separate ports ([331]-rfbport option,
3116 3117
   etc.).

3118 3119 3120 3121 3122 3123 3124
   As of Mar/2005 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc now scales the mouse
   cursor with the same scale factor as the screen. If you don't want
   that, use the [332]"-scale_cursor frac" option to set the cursor
   scaling to a different factor (e.g. use "-scale_cursor 1" to keep the
   cursor at its natural unscaled size).

   Q-64: Does x11vnc work with Xinerama? (i.e. multiple monitors joined
3125 3126 3127 3128 3129 3130 3131 3132 3133 3134 3135
   together to form one big, single screen).

   Yes, it should generally work because it simply polls the big
   effective screen. If the viewing-end monitor is not as big as the
   remote Xinerama display, then the vncviewer scrollbars, etc, will have
   to be used to pan across the large area.

   There are a couple potential issues however. If the screen is not
   rectangular (e.g. 1280x1024 and 1024x768 monitors joined together),
   then there will be "non-existent" areas on the screen. The X server
   will return "garbage" image data for these areas and so they may be
3136
   distracting to the viewer. The [333]-blackout x11vnc option allows you
3137
   to blacken-out rectangles by specifying their WxH+X+Y geometries. If
3138
   your system has the libXinerama library, the [334]-xinerama x11vnc
3139 3140 3141
   option can be used to have it automatically determine the rectangles
   to be blackened out. (Note on 8bpp PseudoColor displays the fill color
   may not be black).
3142 3143 3144

   Some users have reported that the mouse does not behave properly for
   their Xinerama display: i.e. the mouse cannot be moved to all regions
3145
   of the large display. If this happens try using the [335]-xwarppointer
3146 3147 3148 3149 3150
   option. This instructs x11vnc to fake mouse pointer motions using the
   XWarpPointer function instead of the XTestFakeMotionEvent XTEST
   function. (This may be due to a bug in the X server for XTEST when
   Xinerama is enabled).

3151
   Q-65: Can I use x11vnc on a multi-headed display that is not Xinerama
3152 3153 3154 3155 3156 3157 3158 3159 3160 3161 3162 3163 3164 3165 3166 3167 3168
   (i.e. separate screens :0.0, :0.1, ... for each monitor)?

   You can, but it is a little bit awkward: you must start separate
   x11vnc processes for each screen, and on the viewing end start up
   separate VNC viewer processes connecting to them. e.g. on the remote
   end:
  x11vnc -display :0.0 -bg -q -rfbport 5900
  x11vnc -display :0.1 -bg -q -rfbport 5901

   (this could be automated in the display manager Xsetup for example)
   and then on the local machine where you are sitting:
  vncviewer somehost:0 &
  vncviewer somehost:1 &

   Note: if you are running on Solaris 8 or earlier you can easily hit up
   against the maximum of 6 shm segments per process (for Xsun in this
   case) from running multiple x11vnc processes. You should modify
3169 3170
   /etc/system as mentioned in another [336]FAQ to increase the limit. It
   is probably also a good idea to run with the [337]-onetile option in
3171
   this case (to limit each x11vnc to 3 shm segments), or even
3172
   [338]-noshm to use no shm segments.
3173

3174
   Q-66: Can x11vnc show only a portion of the display? (E.g. for a
3175 3176
   special purpose rfb application).

3177
   As of Mar/2005 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc has the "[339]-clip
3178 3179 3180 3181 3182
   WxH+X+Y" option to select a rectangle of width W, height H and offset
   (X, Y). Thus the VNC screen will be the clipped sub-region of the
   display and be only WxH in size.

   This also works to view a sub-region of a single application window if
3183
   the [340]-id or [341]-sid options are used. The offset is measured
3184 3185
   from the upper left corner of the selected window.

3186
   Q-67: Does x11vnc support the XRANDR (X Resize, Rotate and Reflection)
3187 3188 3189 3190
   extension? Whenever I rotate or resize the screen x11vnc just seems to
   crash.

   As of Dec/2004 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc supports XRANDR. You
3191
   enable it with the [342]-xrandr option to make x11vnc monitor XRANDR
3192 3193 3194 3195 3196 3197 3198 3199
   events and also trap X server errors if the screen change occurred in
   the middle of an X call like XGetImage. Once it traps the screen
   change it will create a new framebuffer using the new screen. If the
   connected vnc viewers support the NewFBSize VNC extension (Windows
   TightVNC viewer and RealVNC 4.0 windows and Unix viewers do) then the
   viewer will automatically resize. Otherwise, the new framebuffer is
   fit as best as possible into the original viewer size (portions of the
   screen may be clipped, unused, etc). For these viewers you can try the
3200
   [343]-padgeom option to make the region big enough to hold all resizes
3201
   and rotations.
3202 3203 3204 3205 3206 3207

   If you specify "-xrandr newfbsize" then vnc viewers that do not
   support NewFBSize will be disconnected before the resize. If you
   specify "-xrandr exit" then all will be disconnected and x11vnc will
   terminate.

3208
   Q-68: Why is the view in my VNC viewer completely black? Or why is
3209 3210 3211 3212
   everything flashing around randomly?

   See the next FAQ for a possible explanation.

3213
   Q-69: I use Linux Virtual Consoles (VC's) to implement 'Fast User
3214 3215
   Switching' between users' sessions (e.g. Betty is on Ctrl-Alt-F7,
   Bobby is on Ctrl-Alt-F8, and Sid is on Ctrl-Alt-F1: they use those
3216
   keystrokes to switch between their sessions).   How come the view in a
3217 3218 3219 3220 3221 3222 3223 3224 3225 3226 3227 3228 3229 3230 3231 3232 3233 3234 3235 3236
   VNC viewer connecting to x11vnc is either completely black or
   otherwise all messed up unless the X session x11vnc is attached to is
   in the active VC?

   This seems to have to do with how applications (the X server processes
   in this case) must "play nicely" if they are not on the active VC.
   That is, they should not read from the keyboard or mouse or manage the
   video display unless they have the active VC. Given that it appears
   the XGetImage() call must ultimately retrieve the framebuffer data
   from the video hardware itself, it would make sense x11vnc's polling
   wouldn't work unless the X session had active control of the VC.

   There does not seem to be an easy way to work around this. Even xwd(1)
   doesn't work in this case (try it). Something would need to be done at
   a lower level, say in the XFree86 X server. Also, using the XFree86
   Shadow Framebuffer (a copy of the video framebuffer is kept in main
   memory) does not appear to fix the problem.

   If no one is sitting at the workstation and you just want to remotely
   switch the VC over to the one associated with your X session (so
3237 3238 3239 3240 3241 3242 3243 3244 3245 3246 3247 3248 3249 3250 3251 3252 3253 3254 3255 3256 3257 3258 3259 3260 3261 3262 3263 3264 3265 3266 3267 3268 3269 3270 3271 3272 3273 3274 3275 3276 3277 3278 3279 3280 3281 3282 3283
   x11vnc can poll it correctly), one can use the chvt(1) command, e.g.
   "chvt 7" for VC #7.

   Q-70: Can I use x11vnc to view my VMWare session remotely?

   Yes, since VMWare is an X application you can view it via x11vnc in
   the normal way.

   Note that VMWare has several viewing modes:
     * Normal X application window  (with window manager frame)
     * Quick-Switch mode  (with no window manager frame)
     * Fullscreen mode

   The way VMWare does Fullscreen mode on Linux is to display the Guest
   desktop in a separate Virtual Console (e.g. VC 8) (see [344]this FAQ
   on VC's for background). Unfortunately, this Fullscreen VC is not an X
   server. So x11vnc cannot access it. x11vnc works fine with "Normal X
   application window" and "Quick-Switch mode" because these use X.

   One user reports he left his machine with VMWare in the Fullscreen
   mode, and even though his X session wasn't in the active VC, he could
   still connect x11vnc to the X session and pass the keystrokes Ctrl-Alt
   (typing "blind") to the VMWare X app. This induced VMWare to switch
   out of Fullscreen into Normal X mode and he could continue working in
   the Guest desktop remotely.

   Sometimes it is convenient (for performance, etc.) to start VMWare in
   its own X session using startx(1). This can be used to have a minimal
   window manger (e.g. twm or even no window manager), to improve
   response. One can also cut the display depth (e.g. to 16bpp) in this
   2nd X session to improve video performance. This 2nd X session
   emulates Fullscreen mode to some degree and can be viewed via x11vnc
   as long as the VMWare X session [345]is in the active VC.

   Also note that with a little bit of playing with "xwininfo -all
   -children" output one can extract the (non-toplevel) windowid of the
   of the Guest desktop only when VMWare is running as a normal X
   application. Then one can export just the guest desktop (i.e. without
   the VMWare menu buttons) by use of the [346]-id windowid option. The
   caveats are the X session VMWare is in must be in the active VC and
   the window must be fully visible, so this mode is not terribly
   convenient, but could be useful in some circumstances (e.g. running
   VMWare on a very powerful server machine in a server room that happens
   to have a video card, (but need not have a monitor, Keyboard or
   mouse)).

   Q-71: I am using x11vnc where my local machine has "popup/hidden
3284 3285 3286 3287 3288 3289 3290 3291 3292 3293 3294
   taskbars" (e.g. GNOME or MacOS X) and the remote display where x11vnc
   runs also has "popup/hidden taskbars" (e.g. GNOME). When I move the
   mouse to the edge of the screen where the popups happen, the taskbars
   interfere and fight with each other in strange ways. What can I do?

   Is there a way to temporarily disable one or both of these magic
   desktop taskbars? One x11vnc user suggests: it should be
   straightforward to right mouse click on the task bar panel, and
   uncheck "enable auto-hide" from the panel properties dialog box. This
   will make the panel always visible.

3295
   [Misc: Clipboard, Beeps, Thanks, etc.]
3296

3297
   Q-72: Does the Clipboard/Selection get transferred between the
3298 3299 3300 3301 3302
   vncviewer and the X display?

   As of Jan/2004 in the libvncserver CVS x11vnc supports the "CutText"
   part of the rfb protocol. Furthermore, x11vnc is able to hold the
   PRIMARY selection (Xvnc does not seem to do this). If you don't want
3303
   the Clipboard/Selection exchanged use the [347]-nosel option. If you
3304
   don't want the PRIMARY selection to be polled for changes use the
3305
   [348]-noprimary option.
3306

3307 3308 3309 3310
   You may need to watch out for desktop utilities such as KDE's
   "Klipper" that do odd things with the selection, clipboard, and
   cutbuffers.

3311
   Q-73: Why don't I hear the "Beeps" in my X session (e.g. when typing
3312 3313 3314 3315
   tput bel in an xterm)?

   As of Dec/2003 in the libvncserver CVS "Beep" XBell events are tracked
   by default. The X server must support the XKEYBOARD extension (this is
3316 3317
   not on by default in Solaris, see Xserver(1) for how to turn it on via
   +kb), and so you won't hear them if the extension is not present.
3318

3319
   If you don't want to hear the beeps use the [349]-nobell option. If
3320 3321 3322
   you want to hear the audio from the remote applications, consider
   trying a redirector such as esd.

3323
   Q-74: Thanks for your program and for your help! Can I make a
3324 3325 3326
   donation?

   Please do (any amount is appreciated) and thank you for your support!
runge's avatar
runge committed
3327
   Click on the PayPal button below for more info.
3328 3329
   Also, in general I always enjoy hearing from x11vnc users, how they
   use it, what new features they would like, etc.   Please send me an
3330
   [350]email!
3331 3332

   [PayPal]
3333 3334 3335 3336 3337 3338

References

   1. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq
   2. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#downloading
   3. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#building
3339 3340 3341 3342 3343 3344 3345
   4. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq
   5. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#contact
   6. http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
   7. http://www.realvnc.com/
   8. http://www.tightvnc.com/
   9. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#downloading
  10. http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html
3346 3347 3348 3349 3350 3351 3352 3353 3354 3355 3356 3357 3358 3359 3360 3361 3362 3363 3364 3365 3366 3367
  11. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-auth
  12. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xperms
  13. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-viewer-download
  14. http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/
  15. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-forever
  16. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-forever
  17. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-service
  18. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwd
  19. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#vnc_password_file
  20. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-connect
  21. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-inetd
  22. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#tightvnc_via
  23. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-bg
  24. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-connect
  25. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-inetd
  26. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-rfbauth
  27. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwd
  28. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwdfile
  29. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-passwdfile
  30. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-allow-opt
  31. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-tcp_wrappers
  32. http://sourceforge.net/projects/libvncserver/
runge's avatar
runge committed
3368 3369
  33. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=32584&package_id=119006&release_id=307884
  34. http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=32584&release_id=307884
3370 3371 3372 3373 3374 3375 3376 3377 3378 3379 3380 3381 3382 3383 3384 3385 3386 3387 3388 3389 3390 3391 3392 3393 3394 3395 3396
  35. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc.c
  36. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/tkx11vnc.h
  37. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-binaries
  38. http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html
  39. http://www.realvnc.com/download-free.html
  40. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/
  41. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/rx11vnc
  42. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/rx11vnc.pl
  43. http://www.sunfreeware.com/
  44. ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/
  45. http://www.gzip.org/zlib/
  46. http://www.sunfreeware.com/
  47. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-solaris251build
  48. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-solid
  49. http://www.tightvnc.com/
  50. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-rfbport
  51. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html
  52. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwd
  53. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/recurse_x11vnc.jpg
  54. http://wwws.sun.com/sunray/index.html
  55. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nap
  56. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-wait
  57. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-rfbport
  58. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/shm_clear
  59. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-cursor
  60. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-overlay
  61. mailto:xvml@karlrunge.com
runge's avatar
runge committed
3397 3398 3399 3400 3401 3402 3403 3404 3405 3406 3407 3408 3409 3410 3411 3412 3413 3414 3415 3416 3417 3418 3419 3420 3421 3422 3423 3424 3425 3426 3427 3428 3429 3430 3431 3432 3433 3434 3435 3436 3437
  62. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-thanks
  63. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xperms
  64. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-build
  65. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-solaris251build
  66. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-binaries
  67. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-viewer-download
  68. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-cmdline-opts
  69. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-config-file
  70. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-quiet-bg
  71. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-sigpipe
  72. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-win2vnc
  73. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-win2vnc-8bpp
  74. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-8bpp
  75. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-overlays
  76. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-windowid
  77. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-transients-id
  78. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-24bpp
  79. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-noshm
  80. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xterminal-xauth
  81. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-stop-bg
  82. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-remote_control
  83. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwd
  84. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwdfile
  85. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-input-opt
  86. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-forever-shared
  87. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-allow-opt
  88. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-tcp_wrappers
  89. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-listen-interface
  90. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-listen-localhost
  91. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-ssh-unix
  92. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-ssh-putty
  93. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-accept-opt
  94. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-unix-passwords
  95. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-users-opt
  96. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-blockdpy
  97. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-gone-lock
  98. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-service
  99. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-display-manager
 100. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-inetd
 101. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-java-http
 102. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-reverse-connect
3438 3439 3440 3441 3442 3443 3444 3445 3446 3447 3448 3449 3450 3451 3452 3453 3454 3455 3456 3457 3458 3459 3460 3461 3462 3463 3464 3465 3466 3467 3468 3469 3470 3471 3472
 103. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xvfb
 104. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-solshm
 105. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-less-resource
 106. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-more-resource
 107. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-slow-link
 108. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-pointer-mode
 109. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xdamage
 110. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-cursor-shape
 111. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xfixes-alpha
 112. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xfixes-alpha-hacks
 113. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-cursor-arrow
 114. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-cursor-positions
 115. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-buttonmap-opt
 116. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-altgr
 117. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-greaterless
 118. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xkbmodtweak
 119. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-repeated-keys
 120. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-repeated-keys-still
 121. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-remap-opt
 122. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-sun-alt-meta
 123. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-remap-button-click
 124. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-scrollbars
 125. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-scaling
 126. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xinerama
 127. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-multi-screen
 128. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-clip-screen
 129. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xrandr
 130. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-black-screen
 131. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-linuxvc
 132. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-vmware
 133. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-hidden-taskbars
 134. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-clipboard
 135. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-beeps
 136. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-thanks
 137. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-display
3473
 138. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-auth
3474 3475 3476 3477 3478 3479 3480 3481 3482 3483 3484 3485 3486 3487 3488 3489 3490 3491 3492 3493 3494 3495 3496 3497 3498 3499 3500 3501 3502 3503 3504 3505 3506 3507 3508 3509 3510
 139. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-users
 140. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-auth
 141. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#solarisbuilding
 142. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_sunos4.html
 143. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#building
 144. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-build
 145. http://packages.debian.org/x11vnc
 146. http://www.linuxpackages.net/search_view.php?by=name&name=x11vnc
 147. http://dag.wieers.com/packages/x11vnc/
 148. http://www.sunfreeware.com/
 149. http://www.bell-labs.com/project/wwexptools/packages.html
 150. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#solarisbuilding
 151. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/bins
 152. http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html
 153. http://www.realvnc.com/download-free.html
 154. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/
 155. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html
 156. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-gui
 157. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-q
 158. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-bg
 159. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-o
 160. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc.c
 161. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-sigpipe
 162. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nofb
 163. http://fredrik.hubbe.net/x2vnc.html
 164. http://www.hubbe.net/~hubbe/win2vnc.html
 165. http://www.deboer.gmxhome.de/
 166. http://sourceforge.net/projects/win2vnc/
 167. http://fredrik.hubbe.net/x2vnc.html
 168. http://freshmeat.net/projects/x2x/
 169. http://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/SRC/x2x/
 170. http://zapek.com/software/zvnc/
 171. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-visual
 172. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-flashcmap
 173. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-notruecolor
 174. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-8bpp
 175. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-overlay
3511
 176. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-overlay
3512 3513 3514 3515 3516 3517 3518 3519 3520 3521 3522 3523 3524 3525 3526 3527 3528 3529 3530 3531 3532 3533 3534 3535 3536 3537 3538 3539 3540 3541 3542 3543 3544 3545 3546 3547 3548 3549
 177. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-id
 178. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-overlay
 179. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-overlays
 180. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-id
 181. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-sid
 182. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-display
 183. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-noshm
 184. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-flipbyteorder
 185. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-auth
 186. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#xauth_pain
 187. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-noshm
 188. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remote
 189. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-query
 190. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-forever
 191. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-bg
 192. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-clear_mods
 193. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-clear_keys
 194. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remote
 195. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-query
 196. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-gui
 197. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-storepasswd
 198. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-rfbauth
 199. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwdfile
 200. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-viewpasswd
 201. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-passwd
 202. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-passwdfile
 203. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-rfbauth
 204. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-input
 205. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-forever
 206. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-shared
 207. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#tunnelling
 208. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwd
 209. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-passwdfile
 210. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-allow
 211. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-localhost
 212. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-tcp_wrappers
 213. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-inetd
 214. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-listen
3550 3551
 215. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-allow
 216. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-localhost
3552 3553 3554 3555 3556 3557 3558 3559 3560 3561 3562 3563 3564 3565 3566 3567 3568 3569 3570 3571 3572 3573 3574 3575 3576 3577 3578 3579 3580 3581 3582 3583 3584 3585 3586 3587 3588 3589 3590 3591 3592 3593 3594 3595 3596 3597 3598 3599 3600 3601 3602 3603 3604 3605 3606 3607 3608 3609 3610 3611 3612 3613 3614 3615 3616 3617 3618 3619 3620 3621 3622 3623 3624 3625 3626 3627 3628 3629 3630 3631 3632 3633 3634 3635 3636 3637 3638 3639 3640 3641 3642 3643 3644 3645 3646 3647 3648 3649 3650 3651 3652 3653 3654 3655 3656 3657 3658
 217. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-allow
 218. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-localhost
 219. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-listen
 220. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-allow
 221. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-localhost
 222. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#tunnelling
 223. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#tunnelling
 224. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-localhost
 225. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-rfbauth
 226. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-passwdfile
 227. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#tunnelling
 228. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-connect
 229. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-accept
 230. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-viewonly
 231. ftp://ftp.x.org/
 232. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/dtVncPopup
 233. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-gone
 234. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-localhost
 235. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#tunnelling
 236. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-accept
 237. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-users
 238. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/blockdpy.c
 239. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-accept
 240. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-gone
 241. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-gone
 242. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-display-manager
 243. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-inetd
 244. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#x11vnc_loop
 245. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-auth
 246. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#dtlogin_solaris
 247. http://www.jirka.org/gdm-documentation/x241.html
 248. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_loop
 249. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xterminal-xauth
 250. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-inetd
 251. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-q
 252. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-auth
 253. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-httpdir
 254. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-connect
 255. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-vncconnect
 256. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-add_keysyms
 257. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-display-manager
 258. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/shm_clear
 259. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-onetile
 260. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-noshm
 261. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-noshm
 262. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nap
 263. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-wait
 264. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-onetile
 265. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-fs
 266. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-threads
 267. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-defer
 268. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-id
 269. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-solid
 270. http://www.tightvnc.com/
 271. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nodragging
 272. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-progressive
 273. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-fs
 274. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-wait
 275. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-defer
 276. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-id
 277. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nosel
 278. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nocursor
 279. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nocursorpos
 280. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-pointer_mode
 281. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nodragging
 282. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-pointer_mode
 283. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-threads
 284. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-xd_area
 285. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-xd_mem
 286. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-noxdamage
 287. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-cursor
 288. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-cursor
 289. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-overlay
 290. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#the-overlay-mode
 291. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#solaris10-build
 292. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xfixes-alpha-hacks
 293. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-alphacut
 294. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-alphafrac
 295. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-alpharemove
 296. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nocursorshape
 297. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-noalphablend
 298. http://www.tightvnc.com/
 299. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nocursor
 300. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-cursorpos
 301. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nocursorpos
 302. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nocursorshape
 303. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-buttonmap
 304. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-debug_pointer
 305. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-buttonmap
 306. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-modtweak
 307. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-greaterless
 308. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xkbmodtweak
 309. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-debug_keyboard
 310. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-modtweak
 311. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remap
 312. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-xkbmodtweak
 313. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-debug_keyboard
 314. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-modtweak
 315. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-xkb
 316. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-skip_keycodes
 317. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remap
 318. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-add_keysyms
 319. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remap
 320. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-add_keysyms
 321. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-norepeat
 322. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-norepeat
 323. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-display-manager
3659
 324. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remap
3660 3661 3662 3663 3664 3665 3666 3667 3668 3669 3670 3671 3672 3673 3674 3675 3676 3677 3678 3679 3680 3681 3682 3683 3684 3685
 325. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remap
 326. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remap
 327. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-remap
 328. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-scaling
 329. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-scale
 330. http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~ssb22/source/vnc-magnification.html
 331. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-rfbport
 332. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-scale_cursor
 333. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-blackout
 334. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-xinerama
 335. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-xwarppointer
 336. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-solshm
 337. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-onetile
 338. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-noshm
 339. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-clip
 340. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-id
 341. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-id
 342. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-xrandr
 343. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-padgeom
 344. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-linuxvc
 345. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/index.html#faq-linuxvc
 346. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-id
 347. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nosel
 348. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-noprimary
 349. http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html#opt-nobell
 350. mailto:xvml@karlrunge.com
3686 3687 3688 3689 3690 3691 3692 3693 3694 3695


=======================================================================
http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/x11vnc_opts.html:

     _________________________________________________________________

x11vnc: a VNC server for real X displays

   Here are all of x11vnc command line options:
3696 3697
% x11vnc -opts      (see below for -help long descriptions)

3698
x11vnc: allow VNC connections to real X11 displays. 0.7.2pre lastmod: 2005-03-1
3699
9
3700 3701 3702 3703

x11vnc options:
  -display disp            -auth file             
  -id windowid             -sid windowid          
3704 3705 3706
  -clip WxH+X+Y            -flashcmap             
  -notruecolor             -visual n              
  -overlay                 -overlay_nocursor      
3707 3708 3709 3710 3711 3712 3713 3714 3715 3716 3717 3718 3719 3720 3721 3722 3723 3724 3725 3726 3727 3728 3729 3730 3731 3732 3733
  -scale fraction          -scale_cursor frac     
  -viewonly                -shared                
  -once                    -forever               
  -timeout n               -inetd                 
  -connect string          -vncconnect            
  -novncconnect            -allow host1[,host2..] 
  -localhost               -input string          
  -viewpasswd string       -passwdfile filename   
  -storepasswd pass file   -accept string         
  -gone string             -users list            
  -noshm                   -flipbyteorder         
  -onetile                 -solid [color]         
  -blackout string         -xinerama              
  -xrandr [mode]           -padgeom WxH           
  -o logfile               -rc filename           
  -norc                    -h, -help              
  -?, -opts                -V, -version           
  -q                       -bg                    
  -modtweak                -nomodtweak            
  -xkb                     -skip_keycodes string  
  -add_keysyms             -clear_mods            
  -clear_keys              -remap string          
  -norepeat                -repeat                
  -nofb                    -nobell                
  -nosel                   -noprimary             
  -cursor [mode]           -nocursor              
  -arrow n                 -noxfixes              
3734 3735 3736 3737 3738 3739 3740 3741 3742 3743 3744 3745
  -alphacut n              -alphafrac fraction    
  -alpharemove             -noalphablend          
  -nocursorshape           -cursorpos             
  -nocursorpos             -xwarppointer          
  -buttonmap string        -nodragging            
  -pointer_mode n          -input_skip n          
  -speeds rd,bw,lat        -debug_pointer         
  -debug_keyboard          -defer time            
  -wait time               -nap                   
  -nonap                   -sb time               
  -noxdamage               -xd_area A             
  -xd_mem f                -sigpipe string        
3746 3747 3748 3749 3750 3751 3752 3753
  -threads                 -nothreads             
  -fs f                    -gaps n                
  -grow n                  -fuzz n                
  -snapfb                  -gui [gui-opts]        
  -remote command          -query variable        
  -sync                    -noremote              
  -unsafe                  -safer                 
  -deny_all              
3754 3755 3756 3757 3758 3759 3760 3761 3762 3763 3764 3765 3766 3767 3768 3769 3770 3771

libvncserver options:
-rfbport port          TCP port for RFB protocol
-rfbwait time          max time in ms to wait for RFB client
-rfbauth passwd-file   use authentication on RFB protocol
                       (use 'storepasswd' to create a password file)
-passwd plain-password use authentication 
                       (use plain-password as password, USE AT YOUR RISK)
-deferupdate time      time in ms to defer updates (default 40)
-desktop name          VNC desktop name (default "LibVNCServer")
-alwaysshared          always treat new clients as shared
-nevershared           never treat new clients as shared
-dontdisconnect        don't disconnect existing clients when a new non-shared
                       connection comes in (refuse new connection instead)
-httpdir dir-path      enable http server using dir-path home
-httpport portnum      use portnum for http connection
-enablehttpproxy       enable http proxy support
-progressive height    enable progressive updating for slow links
runge's avatar
runge committed
3772 3773
-listen ipaddr         listen for connections only on network interface with
                       addr ipaddr. '-listen localhost' and hostname work too.
3774 3775 3776



3777 3778
% x11vnc -help

3779
x11vnc: allow VNC connections to real X11 displays. 0.7.2pre lastmod: 2005-03-1
3780
9
3781 3782 3783 3784 3785 3786 3787 3788 3789 3790 3791 3792

Typical usage is:

   Run this command in a shell on the remote machine "far-host"
   with X session you wish to view:

       x11vnc -display :0

   Then run this in another window on the machine you are sitting at:

       vncviewer far-host:0

3793 3794 3795 3796 3797 3798
Once x11vnc establishes connections with the X11 server and starts listening
as a VNC server it will print out a string: PORT=XXXX where XXXX is typically
5900 (the default VNC server port).  One would next run something like
this on the local machine: "vncviewer hostname:N" where "hostname" is
the name of the machine running x11vnc and N is XXXX - 5900, i.e. usually
"vncviewer hostname:0".
3799

3800
By default x11vnc will not allow the screen to be shared and it will exit
3801
as soon as the client disconnects.  See -shared and -forever below to override
3802 3803
these protections.  See the FAQ on how to tunnel the VNC connection through
an encrypted channel such as ssh(1).
3804 3805 3806 3807 3808 3809 3810 3811

For additional info see: http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/
                    and  http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/#faq


Rudimentary config file support: if the file $HOME/.x11vncrc exists then each
line in it is treated as a single command line option.  Disable with -norc.
For each option name, the leading character "-" is not required.  E.g. a
3812
line that is either "forever" or "-forever" may be used and are equivalent.
3813 3814 3815 3816 3817 3818 3819 3820 3821 3822 3823 3824
Likewise "wait 100" or "-wait 100" are acceptable and equivalent lines.
The "#" character comments out to the end of the line in the usual way.
Leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed off.  Lines may be continued with
a "\" as the last character of a line (it becomes a space character).

Options:

-display disp          X11 server display to connect to, usually :0.  The X
                       server process must be running on same machine and
                       support MIT-SHM.  Equivalent to setting the DISPLAY
                       environment variable to "disp".
-auth file             Set the X authority file to be "file", equivalent to
3825
                       setting the XAUTHORITY environment variable to "file"
3826 3827
                       before startup.  Same as -xauth file.  See Xsecurity(7),
                       xauth(1) man pages for more info.
3828

3829 3830
-id windowid           Show the window corresponding to "windowid" not
                       the entire display.  New windows like popup menus,
3831 3832 3833 3834 3835 3836 3837 3838 3839 3840
                       transient toplevels, etc, may not be seen or may be
                       clipped.  Disabling SaveUnders or BackingStore in the
                       X server may help show them.  x11vnc may crash if the
                       window is initially partially obscured, changes size,
                       is iconified, etc.  Some steps are taken to avoid this
                       and the -xrandr mechanism is used to track resizes.  Use
                       xwininfo(1) to get the window id, or use "-id pick"
                       to have x11vnc run xwininfo(1) for you and extract
                       the id.  The -id option is useful for exporting very
                       simple applications (e.g. the current view on a webcam).
3841
-sid windowid          As -id, but instead of using the window directly it
3842
                       shifts a root view to it: this shows SaveUnders menus,
3843
                       etc, although they will be clipped if they extend beyond
3844
                       the window.
3845 3846 3847 3848 3849 3850
-clip WxH+X+Y          Only show the sub-region of the full display that
                       corresponds to the rectangle with size WxH and offset
                       +X+Y.  The VNC display has size WxH (i.e. smaller than
                       the full display).  This also works for -id/-sid mode
                       where the offset is relative to the upper left corner
                       of the selected window.
3851

3852 3853
-flashcmap             In 8bpp indexed color, let the installed colormap flash
                       as the pointer moves from window to window (slow).
3854
-notruecolor           For 8bpp displays, force indexed color (i.e. a colormap)
3855
                       even if it looks like 8bpp TrueColor (rare problem).
3856 3857 3858 3859 3860 3861 3862
-visual n              Experimental option: probably does not do what you
                       think.  It simply *forces* the visual used for the
                       framebuffer; this may be a bad thing... (e.g. messes
                       up colors or cause a crash). It is useful for testing
                       and for some workarounds.  n may be a decimal number,
                       or 0x hex.  Run xdpyinfo(1) for the values.  One may
                       also use "TrueColor", etc. see <X11/X.h> for a list.
3863
                       If the string ends in ":m" then for better or for
3864
                       worse the visual depth is forced to be m.
3865 3866 3867 3868
-overlay               Handle multiple depth visuals on one screen, e.g. 8+24
                       and 24+8 overlay visuals (the 32 bits per pixel are
                       packed with 8 for PseudoColor and 24 for TrueColor).

3869 3870 3871 3872 3873 3874 3875 3876
                       Currently -overlay only works on Solaris via
                       XReadScreen(3X11) and IRIX using XReadDisplay(3).
                       On Solaris there is a problem with image "bleeding"
                       around transient popup menus (but not for the menu
                       itself): a workaround is to disable SaveUnders
                       by passing the "-su" argument to Xsun (in
                       /etc/dt/config/Xservers).  Also note that the mouse
                       cursor shape is exactly correct in this mode.
3877 3878

                       Use -overlay as a workaround for situations like these:
3879
                       Some legacy applications require the default visual to
3880 3881 3882
                       be 8bpp (8+24), or they will use 8bpp PseudoColor even
                       when the default visual is depth 24 TrueColor (24+8).
                       In these cases colors in some windows will be messed
3883 3884 3885
                       up in x11vnc unless -overlay is used.  Another use of
                       -overlay is to enable showing the exact mouse cursor
                       shape (details below).
3886 3887 3888 3889 3890

                       Under -overlay, performance will be somewhat degraded
                       due to the extra image transformations required.
                       For optimal performance do not use -overlay, but rather
                       configure the X server so that the default visual is
3891
                       depth 24 TrueColor and try to have all apps use that
3892
                       visual (e.g. some apps have -use24 or -visual options).
3893 3894
-overlay_nocursor      Sets -overlay, but does not try to draw the exact mouse
                       cursor shape using the overlay mechanism.
3895 3896

-scale fraction        Scale the framebuffer by factor "fraction".  Values
3897 3898
                       less than 1 shrink the fb, larger ones expand it.  Note:
                       image may not be sharp and response may be slower.
3899 3900 3901 3902
                       If "fraction" contains a decimal point "." it
                       is taken as a floating point number, alternatively
                       the notation "m/n" may be used to denote fractions
                       exactly, e.g. -scale 2/3.
3903

3904 3905
                       Scaling Options: can be added after "fraction" via
                       ":", to supply multiple ":" options use commas.
3906 3907 3908
                       If you just want a quick, rough scaling without
                       blending, append ":nb" to "fraction" (e.g. -scale
                       1/3:nb).  For compatibility with vncviewers the scaled
3909
                       width is adjusted to be a multiple of 4: to disable
3910 3911 3912 3913 3914
                       this use ":n4".  More esoteric options: ":in" use
                       interpolation scheme even when shrinking, ":pad",
                       pad scaled width and height to be multiples of scaling
                       denominator (e.g. 3 for 2/3).

3915 3916 3917 3918 3919 3920 3921 3922
-scale_cursor frac     By default if -scale is supplied the cursor shape is
                       scaled by the same factor.  Depending on your usage,
                       you may want to scale the cursor independently of the
                       screen or not at all.  If you specify -scale_cursor
                       the cursor will be scaled by that factor.  When using
                       -scale mode to keep the cursor at its "natural"
                       size use "-scale_cursor 1".

3923 3924 3925 3926 3927 3928
-viewonly              All VNC clients can only watch (default off).
-shared                VNC display is shared (default off).
-once                  Exit after the first successfully connected viewer
                       disconnects, opposite of -forever. This is the Default.
-forever               Keep listening for more connections rather than exiting
                       as soon as the first client(s) disconnect. Same as -many
3929 3930
-timeout n             Exit unless a client connects within the first n seconds
                       of startup.
3931 3932 3933 3934
-inetd                 Launched by inetd(1): stdio instead of listening socket.
                       Note: if you are not redirecting stderr to a log file
                       (via shell 2> or -o option) you must also specify the
                       -q option, otherwise the stderr goes to the viewer.
3935
-connect string        For use with "vncviewer -listen" reverse connections.
3936
                       If "string" has the form "host" or "host:port"
3937
                       the connection is made once at startup.  Use commas
3938 3939 3940 3941 3942 3943 3944
                       for a list of host's and host:port's.

                       If "string" contains "/" it is instead interpreted
                       as a file to periodically check for new hosts.
                       The first line is read and then the file is truncated.
                       Be careful for this usage mode if x11vnc is running as
                       root (e.g. via inetd(1) or gdm(1)).
3945
-vncconnect            Monitor the VNC_CONNECT X property set by the standard
3946 3947 3948
-novncconnect          VNC program vncconnect(1).  When the property is
                       set to "host" or "host:port" establish a reverse
                       connection.  Using xprop(1) instead of vncconnect may
3949 3950 3951 3952 3953 3954 3955 3956 3957 3958 3959
                       work (see the FAQ).  Default: -vncconnect

-allow host1[,host2..] Only allow client connections from hosts matching
                       the comma separated list of hostnames or IP addresses.
                       Can also be a numerical IP prefix, e.g. "192.168.100."
                       to match a simple subnet, for more control build
                       libvncserver with libwrap support (See the FAQ).  If the
                       list contains a "/" it instead is a interpreted as a
                       file containing addresses or prefixes that is re-read
                       each time a new client connects.  Lines can be commented
                       out with the "#" character in the usual way.
runge's avatar
runge committed
3960 3961 3962 3963 3964 3965 3966 3967 3968 3969 3970 3971 3972
-localhost             Same as "-allow 127.0.0.1".

                       Note: if you want to restrict which network interface
                       x11vnc listens on, see the -listen option below.
                       E.g. "-listen localhost" or "-listen 192.168.3.21".
                       As a special case, the option "-localhost" implies
                       "-listen localhost".

                       For non-localhost -listen usage, if you use the remote
                       control mechanism (-R) to change the -listen interface
                       you may need to manually adjust the -allow list (and
                       vice versa) to avoid situations where no connections
                       (or too many) are allowed.
3973 3974 3975 3976 3977 3978 3979 3980 3981 3982 3983 3984 3985

-input string          Fine tuning of allowed user input.  If "string" does
                       not contain a comma "," the tuning applies only to
                       normal clients.  Otherwise the part before "," is
                       for normal clients and the part after for view-only
                       clients.  "K" is for Keystroke input, "M" for
                       Mouse-motion input, and "B" for Button-click input.
                       Their presence in the string enables that type of input.
                       E.g. "-input M" means normal users can only move
                       the mouse and  "-input KMB,M" lets normal users do
                       anything and enables view-only users to move the mouse.
                       This option is ignored when a global -viewonly is in
                       effect (all input is discarded).
3986 3987
-viewpasswd string     Supply a 2nd password for view-only logins.  The -passwd
                       (full-access) password must also be supplied.
3988 3989 3990 3991 3992 3993 3994 3995 3996 3997
-passwdfile filename   Specify libvncserver -passwd via the first line of the
                       file "filename" instead of via command line (where
                       others might see it via ps(1)).  If a second non blank
                       line exists in the file it is taken as a view-only
                       password (i.e. -viewpasswd) To supply an empty password
                       for either field the string "__EMPTY__" may be used.
                       Note: -passwdfile is a simple plaintext passwd, see
                       also -rfbauth and -storepasswd below for obfuscated
                       VNC password files.  Neither file should be readable
                       by others.
3998 3999 4000 4001 4002 4003 4004 4005
-storepasswd pass file Store password "pass" as the VNC password in the
                       file "file".  Once the password is stored the
                       program exits.  Use the password via "-rfbauth file"
-accept string         Run a command (possibly to prompt the user at the
                       X11 display) to decide whether an incoming client
                       should be allowed to connect or not.  "string" is
                       an external command run via system(3) or some special
                       cases described below.  Be sure to quote "string"
4006 4007 4008 4009
                       if it contains spaces, shell characters, etc.  If the
                       external command returns 0 the client is accepted,
                       otherwise the client is rejected.  See below for an
                       extension to accept a client view-only.
4010

4011 4012 4013 4014 4015
                       If x11vnc is running as root (say from inetd(1) or from
                       display managers xdm(1), gdm(1), etc), think about the
                       security implications carefully before supplying this
                       option (likewise for the -gone option).

4016 4017 4018 4019 4020 4021 4022 4023
                       Environment: The RFB_CLIENT_IP environment variable will
                       be set to the incoming client IP number and the port
                       in RFB_CLIENT_PORT (or -1 if unavailable).  Similarly,
                       RFB_SERVER_IP and RFB_SERVER_PORT (the x11vnc side
                       of the connection), are set to allow identification
                       of the tcp virtual circuit.  The x11vnc process
                       id will be in RFB_X11VNC_PID, a client id number in
                       RFB_CLIENT_ID, and the number of other connected clients
4024
                       in RFB_CLIENT_COUNT.  RFB_MODE will be "accept"
4025 4026 4027 4028 4029 4030 4031

                       If "string" is "popup" then a builtin popup window
                       is used.  The popup will time out after 120 seconds,
                       use "popup:N" to modify the timeout to N seconds
                       (use 0 for no timeout)

                       If "string" is "xmessage" then an xmessage(1)
4032 4033
                       invocation is used for the command.  xmessage must be
                       installed on the machine for this to work.
4034 4035 4036 4037 4038 4039 4040 4041 4042 4043 4044 4045 4046 4047 4048

                       Both "popup" and "xmessage" will present an option
                       for accepting the client "View-Only" (the client
                       can only watch).  This option will not be presented if
                       -viewonly has been specified, in which case the entire
                       display is view only.

                       If the user supplied command is prefixed with something
                       like "yes:0,no:*,view:3 mycommand ..." then this
                       associates the numerical command return code with
                       the actions: accept, reject, and accept-view-only,
                       respectively.  Use "*" instead of a number to indicate
                       the default action (in case the command returns an
                       unexpected value).  E.g. "no:*" is a good choice.

4049
                       Note that x11vnc blocks while the external command
4050 4051 4052 4053 4054
                       or popup is running (other clients may see no updates
                       during this period).

                       More -accept tricks: use "popupmouse" to only allow
                       mouse clicks in the builtin popup to be recognized.
4055 4056 4057 4058
                       Similarly use "popupkey" to only recognize
                       keystroke responses.  These are to help avoid the
                       user accidentally accepting a client by typing or
                       clicking. All 3 of the popup keywords can be followed
4059 4060
                       by +N+M to supply a position for the popup window.
                       The default is to center the popup window.
4061
-gone string           As -accept, except to run a user supplied command when
4062 4063 4064 4065
                       a client goes away (disconnects).  RFB_MODE will be
                       set to "gone" and the other RFB_* variables are as
                       in -accept.  Unlike -accept, the command return code
                       is not interpreted by x11vnc.  Example: -gone 'xlock &'
4066

4067 4068 4069
-users list            If x11vnc is started as root (say from inetd(1) or from
                       display managers xdm(1), gdm(1), etc), then as soon
                       as possible after connections to the X display are
4070 4071 4072
                       established try to switch to one of the users in the
                       comma separated "list".  If x11vnc is not running as
                       root this option is ignored.
4073

4074 4075 4076 4077 4078 4079 4080 4081
                       Why use this option?  In general it is not needed since
                       x11vnc is already connected to the X display and can
                       perform its primary functions.  The option was added
                       to make some of the *external* utility commands x11vnc
                       occasionally runs work properly.  In particular under
                       GNOME and KDE to implement the "-solid color" feature
                       external commands (gconftool-2 and dcop) must be run
                       as the user owning the desktop session.  Since this
4082 4083 4084 4085 4086
                       option switches userid it also affects the userid used
                       to run the processes for the -accept and -gone options.
                       It also affects the ability to read files for options
                       such as -connect, -allow, and -remap.  Note that the
                       -connect file is also sometimes written to.
4087

4088 4089
                       So be careful with this option since in many situations
                       its use can decrease security.
4090

4091 4092 4093 4094 4095 4096 4097
                       The switch to a user will only take place if the
                       display can still be successfully opened as that user
                       (this is primarily to try to guess the actual owner
                       of the session). Example: "-users fred,wilma,betty".
                       Note that a malicious user "barney" by quickly using
                       "xhost +" when logging in may get x11vnc to switch
                       to user "fred".  What happens next?
4098

4099 4100 4101
                       Under display managers it may be a long time before
                       the switch succeeds (i.e. a user logs in).  To make
                       it switch immediately regardless if the display
4102
                       can be reopened prefix the username with the "+"
4103 4104 4105 4106
                       character. E.g. "-users +bob" or "-users +nobody".
                       The latter (i.e. switching immediately to user
                       "nobody") is probably the only use of this option
                       that increases security.
4107

4108 4109 4110 4111
                       To immediately switch to a user *before* connections
                       to the X display are made or any files opened use the
                       "=" character: "-users =bob".  That user needs to
                       be able to open the X display of course.
4112

4113 4114 4115 4116 4117
                       The special user "guess=" means to examine the utmpx
                       database (see who(1)) looking for a user attached to
                       the display number (from DISPLAY or -display option)
                       and try him/her.  To limit the list of guesses, use:
                       "-users guess=bob,betty".
4118

4119 4120 4121 4122 4123
                       Even more sinister is the special user "lurk=" that
                       means to try to guess the DISPLAY from the utmpx login
                       database as well.  So it "lurks" waiting for anyone
                       to log into an X session and then connects to it.
                       Specify a list of users after the = to limit which
runge's avatar
runge committed
4124
                       users will be tried.  To enable a different searching
4125 4126 4127 4128 4129 4130
                       mode, if the first user in the list is something like
                       ":0" or ":0-2" that indicates a range of DISPLAY
                       numbers that will be tried (regardless of whether
                       they are in the utmpx database) for all users that
                       are logged in.  Examples: "-users lurk=" and also
                       "-users lurk=:0-1,bob,mary"
4131

4132 4133 4134
                       Be especially careful using the "guess=" and "lurk="
                       modes.  They are not recommended for use on machines
                       with untrustworthy local users.
4135

4136 4137 4138 4139 4140 4141 4142 4143
-noshm                 Do not use the MIT-SHM extension for the polling.
                       Remote displays can be polled this way: be careful this
                       can use large amounts of network bandwidth.  This is
                       also of use if the local machine has a limited number
                       of shm segments and -onetile is not sufficient.
-flipbyteorder         Sometimes needed if remotely polled host has different
                       endianness.  Ignored unless -noshm is set.
-onetile               Do not use the new copy_tiles() framebuffer mechanism,
4144 4145
                       just use 1 shm tile for polling.  Limits shm segments
                       used to 3.
4146

4147 4148 4149 4150
-solid [color]         To improve performance, when VNC clients are connected
                       try to change the desktop background to a solid color.
                       The [color] is optional: the default color is "cyan4".
                       For a different one specify the X color (rgb.txt name,
4151 4152 4153 4154 4155 4156
                       e.g. "darkblue" or numerical "#RRGGBB").

                       Currently this option only works on GNOME, KDE, CDE,
                       and classic X (i.e. with the background image on the
                       root window).  The "gconftool-2" and "dcop" external
                       commands are run for GNOME and KDE respectively.
4157
                       Other desktops won't work, e.g. Xfce (send us the
4158 4159 4160 4161 4162
                       corresponding commands if you find them).  If x11vnc is
                       running as root (inetd(1) or gdm(1)), the -users option
                       may be needed for GNOME and KDE.  If x11vnc guesses
                       your desktop incorrectly, you can force it by prefixing
                       color with "gnome:", "kde:", "cde:" or "root:".
4163 4164 4165
-blackout string       Black out rectangles on the screen. "string" is a
                       comma separated list of WxH+X+Y type geometries for
                       each rectangle.
4166 4167
-xinerama              If your screen is composed of multiple monitors
                       glued together via XINERAMA, and that screen is
4168 4169
                       non-rectangular this option will try to guess the
                       areas to black out (if your system has libXinerama).
4170

4171 4172
                       In general on XINERAMA displays you may need to use the
                       -xwarppointer option if the mouse pointer misbehaves.
4173

4174 4175 4176 4177 4178 4179 4180 4181 4182
-xrandr [mode]         If the display supports the XRANDR (X Resize, Rotate
                       and Reflection) extension, and you expect XRANDR events
                       to occur to the display while x11vnc is running, this
                       options indicates x11vnc should try to respond to
                       them (as opposed to simply crashing by assuming the
                       old screen size).  See the xrandr(1) manpage and run
                       'xrandr -q' for more info.  [mode] is optional and
                       described below.

4183 4184 4185 4186 4187 4188 4189 4190 4191 4192
                       Since watching for XRANDR events and trapping errors
                       increases polling overhead, only use this option if
                       XRANDR changes are expected.  For example on a rotatable
                       screen PDA or laptop, or using a XRANDR-aware Desktop
                       where you resize often.  It is best to be viewing with a
                       vncviewer that supports the NewFBSize encoding, since it
                       knows how to react to screen size changes.  Otherwise,
                       libvncserver tries to do so something reasonable for
                       viewers that cannot do this (portions of the screen
                       may be clipped, unused, etc).
4193 4194 4195 4196 4197 4198 4199 4200 4201 4202 4203 4204 4205 4206 4207

                       "mode" defaults to "resize", which means create a
                       new, resized, framebuffer and hope all viewers can cope
                       with the change.  "newfbsize" means first disconnect
                       all viewers that do not support the NewFBSize VNC
                       encoding, and then resize the framebuffer.  "exit"
                       means disconnect all viewer clients, and then terminate
                       x11vnc.
-padgeom WxH           Whenever a new vncviewer connects, the framebuffer is
                       replaced with a fake, solid black one of geometry WxH.
                       Shortly afterwards the framebuffer is replaced with the
                       real one.  This is intended for use with vncviewers
                       that do not support NewFBSize and one wants to make
                       sure the initial viewer geometry will be big enough
                       to handle all subsequent resizes (e.g. under -xrandr,
4208
                       -remote id:windowid, rescaling, etc.)
4209

4210
-o logfile             Write stderr messages to file "logfile" instead of
4211 4212
                       to the terminal.  Same as "-logfile file".  To append
                       to the file use "-oa file" or "-logappend file".
4213 4214 4215
-rc filename           Use "filename" instead of $HOME/.x11vncrc for rc file.
-norc                  Do not process any .x11vncrc file for options.
-h, -help              Print this help text.
4216
-?, -opts              Only list the x11vnc options.
4217
-V, -version           Print program version and last modification date.
4218 4219 4220 4221 4222 4223 4224 4225 4226 4227 4228 4229 4230 4231 4232 4233 4234 4235 4236

-q                     Be quiet by printing less informational output to
                       stderr.  Same as -quiet.
-bg                    Go into the background after screen setup.  Messages to
                       stderr are lost unless -o logfile is used.  Something
                       like this could be useful in a script:
                         port=`ssh $host "x11vnc -display :0 -bg" | grep PORT`
                         port=`echo "$port" | sed -e 's/PORT=//'`
                         port=`expr $port - 5900`
                         vncviewer $host:$port

-modtweak              Option -modtweak automatically tries to adjust the AltGr
-nomodtweak            and Shift modifiers for differing language keyboards
                       between client and host.  Otherwise, only a single key
                       press/release of a Keycode is simulated (i.e. ignoring
                       the state of the modifiers: this usually works for
                       identical keyboards).  Also useful in resolving cases
                       where a Keysym is bound to multiple keys (e.g. "<" + ">"
                       and "," + "<" keys).  Default: -modtweak
4237 4238 4239 4240 4241 4242 4243 4244 4245 4246 4247
-xkb                   When in modtweak mode, use the XKEYBOARD extension (if
                       the X display supports it) to do the modifier tweaking.
                       This is powerful and should be tried if there are still
                       keymapping problems when using -modtweak by itself.
-skip_keycodes string  Ignore the comma separated list of decimal keycodes.
                       Perhaps these are keycodes not on your keyboard but
                       your X server thinks exist.  Currently only applies
                       to -xkb mode.  Use this option to help x11vnc in the
                       reverse problem it tries to solve: Keysym -> Keycode(s)
                       when ambiguities exist (more than one Keycode per
                       Keysym).  Run 'xmodmap -pk' to see your keymapping.
4248
                       Example: "-skip_keycodes 94,114"
4249 4250 4251
-add_keysyms           If a Keysym is received from a VNC viewer and
                       that Keysym does not exist in the X server, then
                       add the Keysym to the X server's keyboard mapping.
4252
                       Added Keysyms will be removed when x11vnc exits.
4253 4254 4255 4256 4257 4258 4259 4260 4261 4262 4263 4264
-clear_mods            At startup and exit clear the modifier keys by sending
                       KeyRelease for each one. The Lock modifiers are skipped.
                       Used to clear the state if the display was accidentally
                       left with any pressed down.
-clear_keys            As -clear_mods, except try to release any pressed key.
                       Note that this option and -clear_mods can interfere
                       with a person typing at the physical keyboard.
-remap string          Read Keysym remappings from file named "string".
                       Format is one pair of Keysyms per line (can be name
                       or hex value) separated by a space.  If no file named
                       "string" exists, it is instead interpreted as this
                       form: key1-key2,key3-key4,...  See <X11/keysymdef.h>
4265 4266 4267 4268
                       header file for a list of Keysym names, or use xev(1).
                       To map a key to a button click, use the fake Keysyms
                       "Button1", ..., etc. E.g: "-remap Super_R-Button2"
                       (useful for pasting on a laptop)
4269 4270 4271 4272 4273 4274 4275
-norepeat              Option -norepeat disables X server key auto repeat
-repeat                when VNC clients are connected.  This works around a
                       repeating keystrokes bug (triggered by long processing
                       delays between key down and key up client events:
                       either from large screen changes or high latency).
                       Note: your VNC viewer side will likely do autorepeating,
                       so this is no loss unless someone is simultaneously at
4276
                       the real X display.  Default: -norepeat
4277

4278 4279 4280 4281 4282
                       Use "-norepeat N" to set how many times norepeat will
                       be reset if something else (e.g. X session manager)
                       disables it.  The default is 2.  Use a negative value
                       for unlimited resets.

4283 4284 4285 4286 4287 4288 4289 4290 4291 4292 4293
-nofb                  Ignore video framebuffer: only process keyboard and
                       pointer.  Intended for use with Win2VNC and x2vnc
                       dual-monitor setups.
-nobell                Do not watch for XBell events. (no beeps will be heard)
                       Note: XBell monitoring requires the XKEYBOARD extension.
-nosel                 Do not manage exchange of X selection/cutbuffer between
                       VNC viewers and the X server.
-noprimary             Do not poll the PRIMARY selection for changes to send
                       back to clients.  (PRIMARY is still set on received
                       changes, however).

4294 4295 4296 4297 4298 4299 4300 4301 4302 4303 4304 4305
-cursor [mode]         Sets how the pointer cursor shape (little icon at the
-nocursor              mouse pointer) should be handled.  The "mode" string
                       is optional and is described below.  The default
                       is to show some sort of cursor shape(s).  How this
                       is done depends on the VNC viewer and the X server.
                       Use -nocursor to disable cursor shapes completely.

                       Some VNC viewers support the TightVNC CursorPosUpdates
                       and CursorShapeUpdates extensions (cuts down on
                       network traffic by not having to send the cursor image
                       every time the pointer is moved), in which case these
                       extensions are used (see -nocursorshape and -nocursorpos
4306 4307 4308 4309 4310 4311
                       below to disable).  For other viewers the cursor shape
                       is written directly to the framebuffer every time the
                       pointer is moved or changed and gets sent along with
                       the other framebuffer updates.  In this case, there
                       will be some lag between the vnc viewer pointer and
                       the remote cursor position.
4312 4313

                       If the X display supports retrieving the cursor shape
4314 4315 4316 4317 4318 4319 4320 4321 4322 4323 4324
                       information from the X server, then the default is
                       to use that mode.  On Solaris this can be done with
                       the SUN_OVL extension using -overlay (see also the
                       -overlay_nomouse option).  A similar overlay scheme
                       is used on IRIX.  Xorg (e.g. Linux) and recent Solaris
                       Xsun servers support the XFIXES extension to retrieve
                       the exact cursor shape from the X server.  If XFIXES
                       is present it is preferred over Overlay and is used by
                       default (see -noxfixes below).  This can be disabled
                       with -nocursor, and also some values of the "mode"
                       option below.
4325

4326 4327
                       Note that under XFIXES cursors with transparency (alpha
                       channel) will not be exactly represented and one may
4328 4329 4330
                       find Overlay preferable.  See also the -alphacut and
                       -alphafrac options below as fudge factors to try to
                       improve the situation for cursors with transparency
4331
                       for a given theme.
4332 4333 4334 4335 4336

                       The "mode" string can be used to fine-tune the
                       displaying of cursor shapes.  It can be used the
                       following ways:

4337 4338 4339 4340 4341
                       "-cursor arrow" - just show the standard arrow
                       nothing more or nothing less.

                       "-cursor none" - same as "-nocursor"

4342 4343 4344 4345 4346 4347 4348 4349 4350 4351 4352 4353 4354 4355 4356 4357
                       "-cursor X" - when the cursor appears to be on the
                       root window, draw the familiar X shape.  Some desktops
                       such as GNOME cover up the root window completely,
                       and so this will not work, try "X1", etc, to try to
                       shift the tree depth.  On high latency links or slow
                       machines there will be a time lag between expected and
                       the actual cursor shape.

                       "-cursor some" - like "X" but use additional
                       heuristics to try to guess if the window should have
                       a windowmanager-like resizer cursor or a text input
                       I-beam cursor.  This is a complete hack, but may be
                       useful in some situations because it provides a little
                       more feedback about the cursor shape.

                       "-cursor most" - try to show as many cursors as
4358 4359 4360 4361
                       possible.  Often this will only be the same as "some"
                       unless the display has overlay visuals or XFIXES
                       extensions available.  On Solaris and IRIX if XFIXES
                       is not available, -overlay mode will be attempted.
4362

4363 4364 4365
-arrow n               Choose an alternate "arrow" cursor from a set of
                       some common ones.  n can be 1 to 6.  Default is: 1

4366 4367
-noxfixes              Do not use the XFIXES extension to draw the exact cursor
                       shape even if it is available.
4368 4369 4370 4371 4372 4373
-alphacut n            When using the XFIXES extension for the cursor shape,
                       cursors with transparency will not be displayed exactly
                       (but opaque ones will).  This option sets n as a cutoff
                       for cursors that have transparency ("alpha channel"
                       with values ranging from 0 to 255) Any cursor pixel with
                       alpha value less than n becomes completely transparent.
4374
                       Otherwise the pixel is completely opaque.  Default 240
4375

4376 4377 4378 4379 4380 4381 4382 4383 4384 4385 4386 4387 4388 4389
                       Note: the options -alphacut, -alphafrac, and -alphafrac
                       may be removed if a more accurate internal method for
                       handling cursor transparency is implemented.
-alphafrac fraction    With the threshold in -alphacut some cursors will become
                       almost completely transparent because their alpha values
                       are not high enough.  For those cursors adjust the
                       alpha threshold until fraction of the non-zero alpha
                       channel pixels become opaque.  Default 0.33
-alpharemove           By default, XFIXES cursors pixels with transparency have
                       the alpha factor multiplied into the RGB color values
                       (i.e. that corresponding to blending the cursor with a
                       black background).  Specify this option to remove the
                       alpha factor. (useful for light colored semi-transparent
                       cursors).
4390 4391 4392 4393 4394 4395 4396 4397
-noalphablend          In XFIXES mode do not send cursor alpha channel data
                       to libvncserver.  The default is to send it.  The
                       alphablend effect will only be visible in -nocursorshape
                       mode or for clients with cursorshapeupdates turned
                       off. (However there is a hack for 32bpp with depth 24,
                       it uses the extra 8 bits to store cursor transparency
                       for use with a hacked vncviewer that applies the
                       transparency locally.  See the FAQ for more info).
4398

4399 4400
-nocursorshape         Do not use the TightVNC CursorShapeUpdates extension
                       even if clients support it.  See -cursor above.
4401 4402
-cursorpos             Option -cursorpos enables sending the X cursor position
-nocursorpos           back to all vnc clients that support the TightVNC
4403 4404
                       CursorPosUpdates extension.  Other clients will be able
                       to see the pointer motions. Default: -cursorpos
4405 4406 4407 4408 4409
-xwarppointer          Move the pointer with XWarpPointer(3X) instead of
                       the XTEST extension.  Use this as a workaround
                       if the pointer motion behaves incorrectly, e.g.
                       on touchscreens or other non-standard setups.
                       Also sometimes needed on XINERAMA displays.
4410

4411 4412 4413 4414 4415 4416 4417 4418 4419 4420 4421 4422 4423 4424 4425 4426 4427 4428 4429 4430 4431 4432 4433
-buttonmap string      String to remap mouse buttons.  Format: IJK-LMN, this
                       maps buttons I -> L, etc., e.g.  -buttonmap 13-31

                       Button presses can also be mapped to keystrokes: replace
                       a button digit on the right of the dash with :<sym>:
                       or :<sym1>+<sym2>: etc. for multiple keys. For example,
                       if the viewing machine has a mouse-wheel (buttons 4 5)
                       but the x11vnc side does not, these will do scrolls:
                              -buttonmap 12345-123:Prior::Next:
                              -buttonmap 12345-123:Up+Up+Up::Down+Down+Down:

                       See <X11/keysymdef.h> header file for a list of Keysyms,
                       or use the xev(1) program.  Note: mapping of button
                       clicks to Keysyms may not work if -modtweak or -xkb is
                       needed for the Keysym.

                       If you include a modifier like "Shift_L" the
                       modifier's up/down state is toggled, e.g. to send
                       "The" use :Shift_L+t+Shift_L+h+e: (the 1st one is
                       shift down and the 2nd one is shift up). (note: the
                       initial state of the modifier is ignored and not reset)
                       To include button events use "Button1", ... etc.

4434 4435 4436 4437 4438 4439 4440 4441 4442 4443
-nodragging            Do not update the display during mouse dragging events
                       (mouse button held down).  Greatly improves response on
                       slow setups, but you lose all visual feedback for drags,
                       text selection, and some menu traversals.  It overrides
                       any -pointer_mode setting
-pointer_mode n        Various pointer motion update schemes. "-pm" is
                       an alias.  The problem is pointer motion can cause
                       rapid changes on the screen: consider the rapid changes
                       when you drag a large window around.  Neither x11vnc's
                       screen polling and vnc compression routines nor the
4444
                       bandwidth to the vncviewers can keep up these rapid
4445 4446 4447 4448 4449 4450 4451 4452 4453 4454 4455 4456 4457 4458 4459 4460 4461 4462 4463 4464 4465 4466 4467 4468 4469 4470 4471 4472 4473 4474 4475 4476 4477 4478
                       screen changes: everything will bog down when dragging
                       or scrolling.  So a scheme has to be used to "eat"
                       much of that pointer input before re-polling the screen
                       and sending out framebuffer updates. The mode number
                       "n" can be 0 to 4 and selects one of the schemes
                       desribed below.

                       n=0: does the same as -nodragging. (all screen polling
                       is suspended if a mouse button is pressed.)

                       n=1: was the original scheme used to about Jan 2004:
                       it basically just skips -input_skip keyboard or pointer
                       events before repolling the screen.

                       n=2 is an improved scheme: by watching the current rate
                       of input events it tries to detect if it should try to
                       "eat" additional pointer events before continuing.

                       n=3 is basically a dynamic -nodragging mode: it detects
                       when the mouse motion has paused and then refreshes
                       the display.

                       n=4: attempts to measures network rates and latency,
                       the video card read rate, and how many tiles have been
                       changed on the screen.  From this, it aggressively tries
                       to push screen "frames" when it decides it has enough
                       resources to do so.  NOT FINISHED.

                       The default n is 2. Note that modes 2, 3, 4 will skip
                       -input_skip keyboard events (but it will not count
                       pointer events).  Also note that these modes are not
                       available in -threads mode which has its own pointer
                       event handling mechanism.

4479 4480 4481 4482 4483
                       To try out the different pointer modes to see which
                       one gives the best response for your usage, it is
                       convenient to use the remote control function, for
                       example "x11vnc -R pm:4" or the tcl/tk gui (Tuning ->
                       pointer_mode -> n).
4484

4485
-input_skip n          For the pointer handling when non-threaded: try to
4486 4487
                       read n user input events before scanning display. n < 0
                       means to act as though there is always user input.
4488
                       Default: 10
4489

4490 4491 4492 4493 4494 4495 4496 4497 4498 4499 4500 4501 4502 4503 4504 4505 4506 4507 4508 4509 4510 4511 4512
-speeds rd,bw,lat      x11vnc tries to estimate some speed parameters that
                       are used to optimize scheduling (e.g. -pointer_mode
                       4) and other things.  Use the -speeds option to set
                       these manually.  The triple "rd,bw,lat" corresponds
                       to video h/w read rate in MB/sec, network bandwidth to
                       clients in KB/sec, and network latency to clients in
                       milliseconds, respectively.  If a value is left blank,
                       e.g. "-speeds ,100,15", then the internal scheme is
                       used to estimate the empty value(s).

                       Typical PC video cards have read rates of 5-10 MB/sec.
                       If the framebuffer is in main memory instead of video
                       h/w (e.g. SunRay, shadowfb, Xvfb), the read rate may
                       be much faster.  "x11perf -getimage500" can be used
                       to get a lower bound (remember to factor in the bytes
                       per pixel).  It is up to you to estimate the network
                       bandwith to clients.  For the latency the ping(1)
                       command can be used.

                       For convenience there are some aliases provided,
                       e.g. "-speeds modem".  The aliases are: "modem" for
                       6,4,200; "dsl" for 6,100,50; and "lan" for 6,5000,1

4513 4514 4515 4516 4517 4518
-debug_pointer         Print debugging output for every pointer event.
-debug_keyboard        Print debugging output for every keyboard event.
                       Same as -dp and -dk, respectively.  Use multiple
                       times for more output.

-defer time            Time in ms to wait for updates before sending to client
4519
                       (deferUpdateTime)  Default: 30
4520 4521
-wait time             Time in ms to pause between screen polls.  Used to cut
                       down on load.  Default: 30
4522 4523 4524
-nap                   Monitor activity and if it is low take longer naps
-nonap                 between screen polls to really cut down load when idle.
                       Default: take naps
4525 4526 4527
-sb time               Time in seconds after NO activity (e.g. screen blank)
                       to really throttle down the screen polls (i.e. sleep
                       for about 1.5 secs). Use 0 to disable.  Default: 60
4528

4529 4530 4531 4532 4533 4534 4535 4536 4537 4538 4539 4540 4541 4542 4543 4544 4545 4546 4547 4548 4549 4550 4551 4552 4553 4554 4555 4556 4557 4558
-noxdamage             Do not use the X DAMAGE extension to detect framebuffer
                       changes even if it is available.

                       x11vnc's use of the DAMAGE extension: 1) significantly
                       reduces the load when the screen is not changing much,
                       and 2) detects changed areas (small ones by default)
                       more quickly.

                       Currently the DAMAGE extension is overly conservative
                       and often reports large areas (e.g. a whole terminal
                       or browser window) as damaged even though the actual
                       changed region is much smaller (sometimes just a few
                       pixels).  So heuristics were introduced to skip large
                       areas and use the damage rectangles only as "hints"
                       for the traditional scanline polling.  The following
                       tuning parameters are introduced to adjust this
                       behavior:

-xd_area A             Set the largest DAMAGE rectangle area "A" (in
                       pixels: width * height) to trust as truly damaged:
                       the rectangle will be copied from the framebuffer
                       (slow) no matter what.  Set to zero to trust *all*
                       rectangles. Default: 20000
-xd_mem f              Set how long DAMAGE rectangles should be "remembered",
                       "f" is a floating point number and is in units of the
                       scanline repeat cycle time (32 iterations).  The default
                       (1.0) should give no painting problems. Increase it if
                       there are problems or decrease it to live on the edge
                       (perhaps useful on a slow machine).

4559 4560 4561 4562 4563 4564 4565 4566 4567 4568 4569 4570 4571 4572 4573 4574 4575
-sigpipe string        Broken pipe (SIGPIPE) handling.  "string" can be
                       "ignore" or "exit".  For "ignore" libvncserver
                       will handle the abrupt loss of a client and continue,
                       for "exit" x11vnc will cleanup and exit at the 1st
                       broken connection.  Default: "ignore".
-threads               Whether or not to use the threaded libvncserver
-nothreads             algorithm [rfbRunEventLoop] if libpthread is available
                       Default: -nothreads

-fs f                  If the fraction of changed tiles in a poll is greater
                       than f, the whole screen is updated.  Default: 0.75
-gaps n                Heuristic to fill in gaps in rows or cols of n or
                       less tiles.  Used to improve text paging.  Default: 4
-grow n                Heuristic to grow islands of changed tiles n or wider
                       by checking the tile near the boundary.  Default: 3
-fuzz n                Tolerance in pixels to mark a tiles edges as changed.
                       Default: 2
4576 4577 4578 4579 4580 4581 4582 4583 4584 4585 4586 4587 4588
-snapfb                Instead of polling the X display framebuffer (fb) for
                       changes, periodically copy all of X display fb into main
                       memory and examine that copy for changes.  Under some
                       circumstances this will improve interactive response,
                       or at least make things look smoother, but in others
                       (many) it will make the response worse.  If the video
                       h/w fb is such that reading small tiles is very slow
                       this mode could help.  To keep the "framerate" up
                       the screen size x bpp cannot be too large.  Note that
                       this mode is very wasteful of memory I/O resources
                       (it makes full screen copies even if nothing changes).
                       It may be of use in video capture-like applications,
                       or where window tearing is a problem.
4589

4590 4591
-gui [gui-opts]        Start up a simple tcl/tk gui based on the the remote
                       control options -remote/-query described below.
4592 4593 4594 4595
                       Requires the "wish" program to be installed on the
                       machine.  "gui-opts" is not required: the default is
                       to start up both the gui and x11vnc with the gui showing
                       up on the X display in the environment variable DISPLAY.
4596 4597

                       "gui-opts" can be a comma separated list of items.
4598 4599 4600 4601 4602
                       Currently there are these types of items: 1) a gui mode,
                       a 2) gui "simplicity", and 3) the X display the gui
                       should display on.

                       1) The gui mode can be "start", "conn", or "wait"
4603 4604 4605 4606 4607
                       "start" is the default mode above and is not required.
                       "conn" means do not automatically start up x11vnc,
                       but instead just try to connect to an existing x11vnc
                       process.  "wait" means just start the gui and nothing
                       else (you will later instruct the gui to start x11vnc
4608
                       or connect to an existing one.)
4609

4610 4611 4612 4613 4614 4615 4616 4617
                       2) The gui simplicity is off by default (a power-user
                       gui with all options is presented) To start with
                       something less daunting supply the string "simple"
                       ("ez" is an alias for this).  Once the gui is
                       started you can toggle between the two with "Misc ->
                       simple_gui".

                       3) Note the possible confusion regarding the potentially
4618 4619 4620 4621 4622
                       two different X displays: x11vnc polls one, but you
                       may want the gui to appear on another.  For example, if
                       you ssh in and x11vnc is not running yet you may want
                       the gui to come back to you via your ssh redirected X
                       display (e.g. localhost:10).
4623

4624 4625
                       Examples: "x11vnc -gui", "x11vnc -gui ez"
                       "x11vnc -gui localhost:10", "x11vnc -gui conn,host:0"
4626 4627 4628 4629 4630 4631 4632 4633 4634 4635 4636 4637 4638 4639 4640 4641 4642 4643 4644 4645 4646 4647 4648 4649 4650 4651 4652 4653 4654 4655 4656 4657 4658 4659 4660 4661 4662 4663 4664 4665 4666 4667 4668 4669 4670

                       If you do not specify a gui X display in "gui-opts"
                       then the DISPLAY environment variable and -display
                       option are tried (in that order).  Regarding the x11vnc
                       X display the gui will try to connect to, it first
                       tries -display and then DISPLAY.  For example, "x11vnc
                       -display :0 -gui otherhost:0", will remote control an
                       x11vnc polling :0 and display the gui on otherhost:0

                       If you do not intend to start x11vnc from the gui
                       (i.e. just remote control an existing one), then the
                       gui process can run on a different machine from the
                       x11vnc server as long as X permissions, etc. permit
                       communication between the two.

-remote command        Remotely control some aspects of an already running
                       x11vnc server.  "-R" and "-r" are aliases for
                       "-remote".  After the remote control command is
                       sent to the running server the 'x11vnc -remote ...'
                       command exits.  You can often use the -query command
                       (see below) to see if the x11vnc server processed your
                       -remote command.

                       The default communication channel is that of X
                       properties (specifically VNC_CONNECT), and so this
                       command must be run with correct settings for DISPLAY
                       and possibly XAUTHORITY to connect to the X server
                       and set the property.  Alternatively, use the -display
                       and -auth options to set them to the correct values.
                       The running server cannot use the -novncconnect option
                       because that disables the communication channel.
                       See below for alternate channels.

                       For example: 'x11vnc -remote stop' (which is the same as
                       'x11vnc -R stop') will close down the x11vnc server.
                       'x11vnc -R shared' will enable shared connections, and
                       'x11vnc -R scale:3/4' will rescale the desktop.

                       Note: the more drastic the change induced by the -remote
                       command, the bigger the chance for bugs or crashes.
                       Please report reproducible bugs.

                       The following -remote/-R commands are supported:

                       stop            terminate the server, same as "quit"
4671
                                       "exit" or "shutdown".
4672 4673 4674 4675 4676 4677 4678
                       ping            see if the x11vnc server responds.
                                       Return is: ans=ping:<xdisplay>
                       blacken         try to push a black fb update to all
                                       clients (due to timings a client
                                       could miss it). Same as "zero", also
                                       "zero:x1,y1,x2,y2" for a rectangle.
                       refresh         send the entire fb to all clients.
4679 4680 4681
                       reset           recreate the fb, polling memory, etc.
                       id:windowid     set -id window to "windowid". empty
                                       or "root" to go back to root window
4682
                       sid:windowid    set -sid window to "windowid"
4683 4684
                       waitmapped      wait until subwin is mapped.
                       nowaitmapped    do not wait until subwin is mapped.
4685
                       clip:WxH+X+Y    set -clip mode to "WxH+X+Y"
4686 4687 4688 4689 4690 4691 4692 4693 4694 4695 4696
                       flashcmap       enable  -flashcmap mode.
                       noflashcmap     disable -flashcmap mode.
                       notruecolor     enable  -notruecolor mode.
                       truecolor       disable -notruecolor mode.
                       overlay         enable  -overlay mode (if applicable).
                       nooverlay       disable -overlay mode.
                       overlay_cursor  in -overlay mode, enable cursor drawing.
                       overlay_nocursor disable cursor drawing. same as
                                        nooverlay_cursor.
                       visual:vis      set -visual to "vis"
                       scale:frac      set -scale to "frac"
4697
                       scale_cursor:f  set -scale_cursor to "f"
4698 4699 4700 4701 4702 4703
                       viewonly        enable  -viewonly mode.
                       noviewonly      disable -viewonly mode.
                       shared          enable  -shared mode.
                       noshared        disable -shared mode.
                       forever         enable  -forever mode.
                       noforever       disable -forever mode.
4704 4705 4706
                       timeout:n       reset -timeout to n, if there are
                                       currently no clients, exit unless one
                                       connects in the next n secs.
4707 4708 4709 4710 4711 4712 4713 4714 4715 4716 4717 4718 4719 4720 4721 4722 4723 4724 4725 4726
                       deny            deny any new connections, same as "lock"
                       nodeny          allow new connections, same as "unlock"
                       connect:host    do reverse connection to host, "host"
                                       may be a comma separated list of hosts
                                       or host:ports.  See -connect.
                       disconnect:host disconnect any clients from "host"
                                       same as "close:host".  Use host
                                       "all" to close all current clients.
                                       If you know the client internal hex ID,
                                       e.g. 0x3 (returned by -query clients and
                                       RFB_CLIENT_ID), you can use that too.
                       allowonce:host  For the next connection only, allow
                                       connection from "host".
                       allow:hostlist  set -allow list to (comma separated)
                                       "hostlist". See -allow and -localhost.
                                       Do not use with -allow /path/to/file
                                       Use "+host" to add a single host, and
                                       use "-host" to delete a single host
                       localhost       enable  -localhost mode
                       nolocalhost     disable -localhost mode
runge's avatar
runge committed
4727
                       listen:str      set -listen to str, empty to disable.
4728 4729 4730 4731 4732
                       input:str       set -input to "str", empty to disable.
                       client_input:str set the K, M, B -input on a per-client
                                       basis.  select which client as for
                                       disconnect, e.g. client_input:host:MB
                                       or client_input:0x2:K
4733 4734 4735 4736 4737 4738 4739 4740 4741 4742
                       accept:cmd      set -accept "cmd" (empty to disable).
                       gone:cmd        set -gone "cmd" (empty to disable).
                       noshm           enable  -noshm mode.
                       shm             disable -noshm mode (i.e. use shm).
                       flipbyteorder   enable -flipbyteorder mode, you may need
                                       to set noshm for this to do something.
                       noflipbyteorder disable -flipbyteorder mode.
                       onetile         enable  -onetile mode. (you may need to
                                       set shm for this to do something)
                       noonetile       disable -onetile mode.
4743 4744 4745
                       solid           enable  -solid mode
                       nosolid         disable -solid mode.
                       solid_color:color set -solid color (and apply it).
4746 4747 4748 4749 4750 4751 4752 4753 4754 4755 4756 4757 4758 4759 4760 4761 4762 4763 4764 4765 4766 4767 4768 4769 4770 4771 4772 4773 4774 4775 4776 4777 4778 4779
                       blackout:str    set -blackout "str" (empty to disable).
                                       See -blackout for the form of "str"
                                       (basically: WxH+X+Y,...)
                                       Use "+WxH+X+Y" to append a single
                                       rectangle use "-WxH+X+Y" to delete one
                       xinerama        enable  -xinerama mode. (if applicable)
                       noxinerama      disable -xinerama mode.
                       xrandr          enable  -xrandr mode. (if applicable)
                       noxrandr        disable -xrandr mode.
                       xrandr_mode:mode set the -xrandr mode to "mode".
                       padgeom:WxH     set -padgeom to WxH (empty to disable)
                                       If WxH is "force" or "do" the padded
                                       geometry fb is immediately applied.
                       quiet           enable  -quiet mode.
                       noquiet         disable -quiet mode.
                       modtweak        enable  -modtweak mode.
                       nomodtweak      enable  -nomodtweak mode.
                       xkb             enable  -xkb modtweak mode.
                       noxkb           disable -xkb modtweak mode.
                       skip_keycodes:str enable -xkb -skip_keycodes "str".
                       add_keysyms     enable -add_keysyms mode.
                       noadd_keysyms   stop adding keysyms. those added will
                                       still be removed at exit.
                       clear_mods      enable  -clear_mods mode and clear them.
                       noclear_mods    disable -clear_mods mode.
                       clear_keys      enable  -clear_keys mode and clear them.
                       noclear_keys    disable -clear_keys mode.
                       remap:str       set -remap "str" (empty to disable).
                                       See -remap for the form of "str"
                                       (basically: key1-key2,key3-key4,...)
                                       Use "+key1-key2" to append a single
                                       keymapping, use "-key1-key2" to delete.
                       norepeat        enable  -norepeat mode.
                       repeat          disable -norepeat mode.
4780 4781
                       nofb            enable  -nofb mode.
                       fb              disable -nofb mode.
4782 4783 4784
                       bell            enable  bell (if supported).
                       nobell          disable bell.
                       nosel           enable  -nosel mode.
4785
                       sel             disable -nosel mode.
4786
                       noprimary       enable  -noprimary mode.
4787
                       primary         disable -noprimary mode.
4788 4789 4790 4791 4792 4793
                       cursor:mode     enable  -cursor "mode".
                       show_cursor     enable  showing a cursor.
                       noshow_cursor   disable showing a cursor. (same as
                                       "nocursor")
                       xfixes          enable  xfixes cursor shape mode.
                       noxfixes        disable xfixes cursor shape mode.
4794 4795 4796 4797
                       alphacut:n      set -alphacut to n.
                       alphafrac:f     set -alphafrac to f.
                       alpharemove     enable  -alpharemove mode.
                       noalpharemove   disable -alpharemove mode.
4798 4799
                       alphablend      disable -noalphablend mode.
                       noalphablend    enable  -noalphablend mode.
4800 4801 4802 4803 4804 4805
                       cursorshape     disable -nocursorshape mode.
                       nocursorshape   enable  -nocursorshape mode.
                       cursorpos       disable -nocursorpos mode.
                       nocursorpos     enable  -nocursorpos mode.
                       xwarp           enable  -xwarppointer mode.
                       noxwarp         disable -xwarppointer mode.
4806
                       buttonmap:str   set -buttonmap "str", empty to disable
4807 4808
                       dragging        disable -nodragging mode.
                       nodragging      enable  -nodragging mode.
4809 4810 4811
                       pointer_mode:n  set -pointer_mode to n. same as "pm"
                       input_skip:n    set -input_skip to n.
                       speeds:str      set -speeds to str.
4812 4813 4814 4815 4816 4817
                       debug_pointer   enable  -debug_pointer, same as "dp"
                       nodebug_pointer disable -debug_pointer, same as "nodp"
                       debug_keyboard   enable  -debug_keyboard, same as "dk"
                       nodebug_keyboard disable -debug_keyboard, same as "nodk"
                       defer:n         set -defer to n ms,same as deferupdate:n
                       wait:n          set -wait to n ms.
4818
                       rfbwait:n       set -rfbwait (rfbMaxClientWait) to n ms.
4819 4820 4821
                       nap             enable  -nap mode.
                       nonap           disable -nap mode.
                       sb:n            set -sb to n s, same as screen_blank:n
4822 4823 4824 4825
                       xdamage         enable  xdamage polling hints.
                       noxdamage       disable xdamage polling hints.
                       xd_area:A       set -xd_area max pixel area to "A"
                       xd_mem:f        set -xd_mem remembrance to "f"
4826 4827 4828 4829
                       fs:frac         set -fs fraction to "frac", e.g. 0.5
                       gaps:n          set -gaps to n.
                       grow:n          set -grow to n.
                       fuzz:n          set -fuzz to n.
4830 4831
                       snapfb          enable  -snapfb mode.
                       nosnapfb        disable -snapfb mode.
4832 4833
                       progressive:n   set libvncserver -progressive slice
                                       height parameter to n.
4834 4835 4836 4837 4838 4839 4840 4841 4842 4843 4844 4845 4846 4847 4848 4849 4850 4851
                       desktop:str     set -desktop name to str for new clients
.
                       rfbport:n       set -rfbport to n.
                       http            enable  http client connections.
                       nohttp          disable http client connections.
                       httpport:n      set -httpport to n.
                       httpdir:dir     set -httpdir to dir (and enable http).
                       enablehttpproxy   enable  -enablehttpproxy mode.
                       noenablehttpproxy disable -enablehttpproxy mode.
                       alwaysshared     enable  -alwaysshared mode.
                       noalwaysshared   disable -alwaysshared mode.
                                        (may interfere with other options)
                       nevershared      enable  -nevershared mode.
                       nonevershared    disable -nevershared mode.
                                        (may interfere with other options)
                       dontdisconnect   enable  -dontdisconnect mode.
                       nodontdisconnect disable -dontdisconnect mode.
                                        (may interfere with other options)
4852 4853 4854 4855 4856 4857 4858 4859 4860 4861 4862 4863 4864 4865 4866 4867 4868 4869 4870 4871 4872 4873 4874 4875 4876 4877 4878 4879 4880 4881 4882 4883 4884 4885 4886 4887 4888 4889 4890
                       noremote        disable the -remote command processing,
                                       it cannot be turned back on.

                       The vncconnect(1) command from standard VNC
                       distributions may also be used if string is prefixed
                       with "cmd=" E.g. 'vncconnect cmd=stop'.  Under some
                       circumstances xprop(1) can used if it supports -set
                       (see the FAQ).

                       If "-connect /path/to/file" has been supplied to the
                       running x11vnc server then that file can be used as a
                       communication channel (this is the only way to remote
                       control one of many x11vnc's polling the same X display)
                       Simply run: 'x11vnc -connect /path/to/file -remote ...'
                       or you can directly write to the file via something
                       like: "echo cmd=stop > /path/to/file", etc.

-query variable        Like -remote, except just query the value of
                       "variable".  "-Q" is an alias for "-query".
                       Multiple queries can be done by separating variables
                       by commas, e.g. -query var1,var2. The results come
                       back in the form ans=var1:value1,ans=var2:value2,...
                       to the standard output.  If a variable is read-only,
                       it comes back with prefix "aro=" instead of "ans=".

                       Some -remote commands are pure actions that do not make
                       sense as variables, e.g. "stop" or "disconnect",
                       in these cases the value returned is "N/A".  To direct
                       a query straight to the VNC_CONNECT property or connect
                       file use "qry=..." instead of "cmd=..."

                       Here is the current list of "variables" that can
                       be supplied to the -query command. This includes the
                       "N/A" ones that return no useful info.  For variables
                       names that do not correspond to an x11vnc option or
                       remote command, we hope the name makes it obvious what
                       the returned value corresponds to (hint: the ext_*
                       variables correspond to the presence of X extensions):

4891 4892 4893
                       ans= stop quit exit shutdown ping blacken zero refresh
                       reset close disconnect id sid waitmapped nowaitmapped
                       clip flashcmap noflashcmap truecolor notruecolor
4894 4895
                       overlay nooverlay overlay_cursor overlay_yescursor
                       nooverlay_nocursor nooverlay_cursor nooverlay_yescursor
4896 4897 4898 4899 4900 4901 4902 4903 4904 4905 4906 4907 4908 4909 4910 4911
                       overlay_nocursor visual scale scale_cursor viewonly
                       noviewonly shared noshared forever noforever once
                       timeout deny lock nodeny unlock connect allowonce
                       allow localhost nolocalhost listen accept gone
                       shm noshm flipbyteorder noflipbyteorder onetile
                       noonetile solid_color solid nosolid blackout xinerama
                       noxinerama xrandr noxrandr xrandr_mode padgeom quiet
                       q noquiet modtweak nomodtweak xkb noxkb skip_keycodes
                       add_keysyms noadd_keysyms clear_mods noclear_mods
                       clear_keys noclear_keys remap repeat norepeat fb nofb
                       bell nobell sel nosel primary noprimary cursorshape
                       nocursorshape cursorpos nocursorpos cursor show_cursor
                       noshow_cursor nocursor arrow xfixes noxfixes xdamage
                       noxdamage xd_area xd_mem alphacut alphafrac alpharemove
                       noalpharemove alphablend noalphablend xwarp xwarppointer
                       noxwarp noxwarppointer buttonmap dragging nodragging
4912
                       pointer_mode pm input_skip input client_input speeds
4913 4914 4915 4916 4917
                       debug_pointer dp nodebug_pointer nodp debug_keyboard dk
                       nodebug_keyboard nodk deferupdate defer wait rfbwait
                       nap nonap sb screen_blank fs gaps grow fuzz snapfb
                       nosnapfb progressive rfbport http nohttp httpport
                       httpdir enablehttpproxy noenablehttpproxy alwaysshared
4918 4919 4920
                       noalwaysshared nevershared noalwaysshared dontdisconnect
                       nodontdisconnect desktop noremote

4921
                       aro=  display vncdisplay desktopname http_url auth
4922 4923 4924 4925 4926 4927 4928 4929 4930 4931
                       users rootshift clipshift scale_str scaled_x scaled_y
                       scale_numer scale_denom scale_fac scaling_noblend
                       scaling_nomult4 scaling_pad scaling_interpolate inetd
                       safer unsafe passwdfile using_shm logfile o rc norc
                       h help V version lastmod bg sigpipe threads clients
                       client_count pid ext_xtest ext_xkb ext_xshm ext_xinerama
                       ext_overlay ext_xfixes ext_xdamage ext_xrandr rootwin
                       num_buttons button_mask mouse_x mouse_y bpp depth
                       indexed_color dpy_x dpy_y wdpy_x wdpy_y off_x off_y
                       cdpy_x cdpy_y coff_x coff_y rfbauth passwd
4932

4933 4934 4935 4936 4937 4938 4939 4940 4941 4942 4943 4944 4945 4946 4947 4948 4949 4950 4951
-sync                  By default -remote commands are run asynchronously, that
                       is, the request is posted and the program immediately
                       exits.  Use -sync to have the program wait for an
                       acknowledgement from the x11vnc server that command
                       was processed.  On the other hand -query requests are
                       always processed synchronously because they have wait
                       for the result.

                       Also note that if both -remote and -query requests are
                       supplied on the command line, the -remote is processed
                       first (synchronously: no need for -sync), and then
                       the -query request is processed in the normal way.
                       This allows for a reliable way to see if the -remote
                       command was processed by querying for any new settings.
                       Note however that there is timeout of a few seconds so
                       if the x11vnc takes longer than that to process the
                       requests the requestor will think that a failure has
                       taken place.

4952 4953 4954 4955 4956 4957 4958 4959 4960
-noremote              Do not process any remote control commands or queries.

                       A note about security wrt remote control commands.
                       If someone can connect to the X display and change the
                       property VNC_CONNECT, then they can remotely control
                       x11vnc.  Normally access to the X display is protected.
                       Note that if they can modify VNC_CONNECT, they could
                       also run their own x11vnc and have complete control
                       of the desktop.  If the  "-connect /path/to/file"
4961 4962 4963 4964 4965 4966 4967
                       channel is being used, obviously anyone who can
                       write to /path/to/file can remotely control x11vnc.
                       So be sure to protect the X display and that file's
                       write permissions.

                       To disable the VNC_CONNECT property channel completely
                       use -novncconnect.
4968 4969 4970 4971 4972 4973 4974 4975 4976 4977 4978 4979 4980 4981 4982 4983

-unsafe                If x11vnc is running as root (e.g. inetd or Xsetup for
                       a display manager) a few remote commands are disabled
                       (currently: id:pick, accept:<cmd>, and gone:<cmd>)
                       because they are associated with running external
                       programs.  If you specify -unsafe, then these remote
                       control commands are allowed when running as root.
                       When running as non-root all commands are allowed.
                       See -safer below.
-safer                 Even if not running as root, disable the above unsafe
                       remote control commands.

-deny_all              For use with -remote nodeny: start out denying all
                       incoming clients until "-remote nodeny" is used to
                       let them in.

4984 4985 4986 4987 4988 4989 4990

These options are passed to libvncserver:

-rfbport port          TCP port for RFB protocol
-rfbwait time          max time in ms to wait for RFB client
-rfbauth passwd-file   use authentication on RFB protocol
                       (use 'storepasswd' to create a password file)
4991
-passwd plain-password use authentication
4992 4993 4994 4995 4996 4997 4998 4999 5000 5001 5002
                       (use plain-password as password, USE AT YOUR RISK)
-deferupdate time      time in ms to defer updates (default 40)
-desktop name          VNC desktop name (default "LibVNCServer")
-alwaysshared          always treat new clients as shared
-nevershared           never treat new clients as shared
-dontdisconnect        don't disconnect existing clients when a new non-shared
                       connection comes in (refuse new connection instead)
-httpdir dir-path      enable http server using dir-path home
-httpport portnum      use portnum for http connection
-enablehttpproxy       enable http proxy support
-progressive height    enable progressive updating for slow links
runge's avatar
runge committed
5003 5004
-listen ipaddr         listen for connections only on network interface with
                       addr ipaddr. '-listen localhost' and hostname work too.
5005 5006 5007 5008

   Pretty wild huh? [1]Contact me if you have any questions or problems.

   Personally, I use:
5009
x11vnc -rfbauth $HOME/.vnc/passwd -nap -flashcmap -cursor X -add_keysyms
5010 5011 5012 5013 5014 5015

   (the -flashcmap only matters on old 8-bit X displays)

References

   1. mailto:xvml@karlrunge.com