VNC-Servre - Must the UBUNTU HDA be non desktop ?

[bigfoot65]

Understand. Hoping it works this time. Would like to know if this is an isolated incident or a bigger problem.

[Strata700]

I have an hda again and things are looking good.

a) HDA Installed after bare metal install of ubuntu os
b) Clients (Win 7 pro) connect sucessfully and shares visible.
c) Notice during os updates (applied after amahi install - as suggested) very different activities which make me suspect the initial os install may have been corrupt but not so corrupt as to stop the amahi install and the server from running until it had to do some real work (like when I installed the VNC app and it failed)
d) What I mean here is I saw the updates being unpacked and installed in a window that looked very much like an embedded terminal screen (Black with white text) and reboot was prompt with no warnings. I didnt see this on my crashed system when it supposedly updated !!
e) I conclude a bad sector on my hard disk or misread data from the dvd led to a corrupt underlying ubuntu os but not so corrupt as to break it in the early stages of its use. who knows ??

The other option I considered was my partitioning and FYI in case its of use to any one else I did the following.

I used 3 available 2 TByte discs and used one for the ubuntu os and the other 2 for storage.

The os disk I partitoned with
/boot=500MByte (Primary)
/=5GByte (Primary)
/usr=10Gbyte (Primary)
/tmp=4Gbyte (primary)
/home=1Gbyte (secondary)
swap= 2Xmemory = 16Gbyte
/var = remaining space on disk (secondary) and size approx 1.7TByte)

The other 2 disks I partioned all space (Primary) and allocated them as /HardDisk1 & /hardDisk2 to be used for the greyhole storage pools.

I will be installing favourite initial apps tomorrow (linfo, DLNA, GreyholeLogMon and the VNC I purchased today)

In summary my gut feeling tells me I was unfortunate to have a partially corrupted install of the underlying ubuntu os and that the VNC install and updating the ubuntu caused it to fail when it had to actually do some work. Everything looks good right now - will post results of initial apps install tomorrow (shud that be today its 1am)
Hope the post; long as it is, helps in some way any unease you may have had about the AMAHI install or VNC package. I think its fine and the apps install will be OK

[bigfoot65]

Awesome. You results do make me feel better about things. I do know we have some minor issues to resolve yet, such as the HD temps not displaying. That can be easily corrected by changing /etc/default/hddtemp file. The DAEMON value should be changed to "true" and do

Code: Select all

sudo service hddtemp start

.

Thanks for taking the time to let us know how things are going. We appreciate hearing about user experiences and helps us ensure Amahi for Ubuntu is updated as needed to remain stable.

[wobbly]

ok just so you know i too an having problems with vnc one click install on Ubuntu 64 bit... it worked once .. but only once for me as well

[bigfoot65]

Not sure what the issue could be. I have tested it several times on a VM with no issues. Seems there is something strange going on with Ubuntu.

Can you uninstall, and ensure things are cleaned up, reboot, then reinstall and see if it works? Also any logs or details you can provide that might give us a clue as to the issue would be greatly appreciated.

[bigfoot65]

I made a minor change to the VNC install script. Please let me know if it helps. This should resolve the issue I hope.

[Strata700]

My HDA is solid this morning as I suspected it would be - so great news.
Installed apps last night and VNC was more stable and we know that's because I had a bad OS install previously.

I say it was more stable this time because I could turn the server on/off in control panel, it was responsive and there were no signs of any crashes when I tried to VNC from a client.

So far so good but when using VNC it justs sits there displaying my hda screen background (pretty orange and pink) I must change that

Having read your post this morning I uninstalled and re-installed VNC and the results are the same so its good news everything is stable but it still isn't doing what it should.

Thoughts .....

1) I have seen blank grey screens (as seen yesterday after one off initial success) before in my early days playing with Slackware and having to set up the display parameters manually - could it be that the X server isn't initialising for VNC in some way ?

2) Could it also be display / X11 related because of the GS7600 Nvidia card I have in there and me having to choose a driver at OS install time.

3) last night Ubuntu complained about something called 'Compwiz' and when I opted to send an automated bug report the system told me it was no longer in development for the OS and to go to the help pages. I am no wiser because of this so mention it in-case its relevant. Don't let it be a 'red-herring' as we Brits say (i.e. dont get sidetracked if its useless info)

4) The fact that VNC worked just once must be a strong clue - it works then can't repeat that success upon next log-in - does it not exit cleanly ?? or reset what ever parameters it has to before its called again ?

Your welcome to my logs - but you'll need to clue me in as to how to cut them and paste them to you from a terminal window ? Do I send them to a file and then post them ??

[bigfoot65]

This one is quite puzzling to us. We have tested it several times on VMs and LIVE boxes with success.

Please check the app-installer.log in /var/log directory and there should be a log file in .vnc directory which is included in your user home directory. Also let us know what the ownership permissions of the .vnc folder and files is for your install.

We will sort this out, just a matter of time.

[bigfoot65]

I have made a change to VNC. Please uninstall, reboot, and reinstall. I hope this may fix the issues we have been having lately.