Hello,

How do you restart the x11vnc service via PuTTY without rebooting when VNC fails to connect?

I have KnoppMyth R5A26 running on a desktop computer sitting next to the TV. It has a regular wired (not wireless) PS/2 keyboard and mouse. I do not have any remote control. Therefore, I use my Windows XP laptop computer to connect via VNC (UltraVNC 1.0.1 viewer) to the MythTV backend/frontend to control the frontend and watch recordings.

I used the x11VNC instructions from the KnoppMyth Wiki. It works great. I made a .vnc connection file to quickly open it up on my laptop.

However, after the MythTV box has been active recording, commflagging, transcoding, etc. for a day or so, the VNC will fail to connect anymore. It does not give the "Failed to Connect" error indicating that the VNC server is not active. Instead, it will attempt to connect, it will accept password, it will successfully connect, it will show the VNC window saying "initializing display", then it will disappear.

If I use PuTTY and "top" command, I can see that x11vnc process is still running, so I kill the process, then I try to restart the VNC service using the original command from the wiki. But somehow it doesn't work. My only recourse is to reboot the computer. But this would interrupt the mythbackend recordings.

My questions please:
1. Why does the x11VNC process stop working correctly?
2. How could I restart the VNC server without rebooting the computer fully?
3. What would you suggest?

Thanks very much!

Does anyone know any answers about to my problem?

I tried to disconnect all users connected to the x11vnc server as shown in the quote above, but it didn't seem to disconnect anything. So then I killed the x11vnc process itself, but then I could not restart the x11vnc server manually when using the line from the wiki Howto:



Or maybe I just don't understand how to restart the x11vnc server and use it without rebooting the entire computer. What does the above quote mean when it says "restart X-windows" or "enter x-term for temporary access?" How do I do that? Can I do those things without rebooting the computer completely? I do not want to interrupt ongoing T.V. recordings.

Thanks very much!

For what it's worth, I solved it by adding "-shared" to the x11vnc command.



The reason is because in the /var/log/x11vnc.log file, I could see that my previous VNC session was not terminating from the x11vnc server on the mythTV box, and so when I went to reconnect VNCviewer, it would say "An IP address is already connected! I'm going to disconnect this new session immediately!" By adding the "-shared" parameter, it tells it to allow multiple VNC session connections.

This might be a security risk, so I also added "-allow 192.168.2." to allow any IP addresses from my router internal network (192.168.2.1-192.168.2.255).



This information came from the x11vnc FAQ, http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/#faq-forever-shared, but I think it is more of a workaround rather than solving the underlying problem. I am not sure whether it is related to my 802.11g network randomly disconnecting/reconnecting during the day (2.4GHz telephones? Microwave ovens?" or whether x11vnc has an internal clock that automatically disconnects someone who has been connected for extended time?

Anyways, it works now. Hope it helps someone.

I had tried a few postings on VNC. I want to use VNC or NX to directly control what will be displayed on my TV. I can easily get VNC or NX to present me a nice looking Xsession, but when I choose watch tv or view a recording I do get sound on my TV, but nothing happens with video.

On Windows when I VNC into a computer I directly control that session. The mouse moves and what is displayed within the VNC or NX screen is a duplicate of the computer I'm remoted into. Even the mouse moves on both systems in sync.

Will the above postings allow me to control what is being displayed on my TV? I've turned my Mythbox into a brick a few times before, and don't want to rebuild my mythbox again.

I don't know if I am too late, but this is how u restart xvn