I have found the problem. /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager must have DISPLAYMANAGER="xdm" and DISPLAYMANAGER_REMOTE_ACCESS="yes". The latter was not available.
In /etc/sysconfig/windowmanager the correct WM must be specified, in this case fvwm. Thanks, Berry. -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:LINUX-390@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Troth Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 2:51 PM To: LINUX-390@vm.marist.edu Subject: Re: Activate XDM and VNC You do NOT need a formal graphical logon for to use VNC. By coincidence, Sir Santa railed against passwords in his blog last week, and graphical signon typically means yet more passwords. Counter productive. Larry is right that you'll need core X windows support, but that should have been drawn in automagically by YaST/zypper. So ... once the needed pieces are in place, sign on with SSH and then ... vncserver -geometry 1024x768 (You may prefer a different geometry.) First time you start a VNC server, it will prompt for a VNC password. (But no rant against this one because it is local only and can be used more like a "key".) It should respond with ... "New 'X' desktop is servername:1" ... where "servername" is the hostname of the server you're signed onto. Set 'DISPLAY=servername:1' and export that variable 'export DISPLAY' to child processes as needed. TWM is the default window manager in my experience. Much much less pleasing than KDE or GNOME or XFCE, but also much less overhead. It starts one 'xterm' by default. You can run other apps as you please. (Just point your DISPLAY variable, or run them from that XTERM.) Use 'yast2' for graphical system config. Then connect with any VNC client roughly like ... vncviewer servername:1 I *always* tunnel my VNC traffic. But I'll defer discussion of tunneling unless anyone cares to hear the details. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
