vnc and openGL => freeNX [SOLVED]

Efo · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 494

Hi guys,

I surfed for a while and it seems that vnc has problems running opengl applications. Does anyone has a solution to this problem? Is there any other service like vnc that works with opengl?

I use my laptop at work and at home to login on a remote machine and run simulations. Since most of the simulations run for a long time, I would like to be able to disconnect my laptop once I started the simulations and then check the results later on at home. Unfortunately the simulation program uses opengl.

Maybe if I tunnel the display and vncviewer with ssh the problem doesnt occur... I am not sure if this would work or how to go about it. I really need to get this working, any suggestion is highly appreciated.

thanks,

Efo

anonybosh · Guru Joined: 20 Nov 2005 Posts: 324

Some years ago, I remember being able to view (albeit ridiculously slowly) hardware accelerated output through VNC. At the time I do believe that it was in MSWindows for both client and server (I do not recall what exact VNC server/client I used... maybe tightvnc?).
My experience of late, however is that I just get a black screen in such apps (both for win (winvnc) and lin (krdc)).
I do know that X forwarding will work with such programs, though I'm not too sure about being able to disconnect without killing the program...

Efo · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 494

Thanks anonybosh,

Maybe this information can help:

1) I dont need 3D accelerations
2) the message I get when I run the program is: freeglut ( ): OpenGL GLX extension not supported by display ':1.0'

I think once I kinda got it work with ssh tunneling but I dont remember how.

Efo · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 494

Hi again,

I think the problem may reside in the fact that RENDERING is supported on the remote machine but not on the local machine. Since I do not need it, does anybody know if I can disable it when I set up vncserver?

Efo · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 494

Ok, I have direct rendering on both machines and I still get: freeglut ( ): OpenGL GLX extension not supported by display ':1.0'

The program runs on bot machines independently even when direct rendering is not enabled (i.e. indirect rendering).
There must be a way to get this working.

Gusar · Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 7:59 am Post subject:

vnc doesn't support the GLX extension, so I very much doubt you'll get it working. If you don't mind spending money, the Enterprise edition of Realvnc does support the GLX extension (software only, no hardware acceleration) and a few other things that the free version doesn't. But as said, the Enterprise edition is payware and closed source.

ghutzl · Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:01 am Post subject:

You may want to try the nx client/server solution. For me GLX is working but it is quite slow.

Efo · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 494

Hi ghutzl and thanks for the suggestion.

It looks like that's what I need.
The remote machine runs redhat 8, so I downloaded and installed:
nxclient-3.0.0-84.i386.rpm
nxnode-3.0.0-88.i386.rpm
nxserver-3.0.0-74.i386.rpm

On the local machine I emerged the packages you suggested.

On the remote machine I did: nxserver --useradd username

The I just run nxclient on the local machine but I get the following error:

NX> 203 NXSSH running with pid: 26252
NX> 285 Enabling check on switch command
NX> 285 Enabling skip of SSH config files
NX> 285 Setting the preferred NX options
NX> 200 Connected to address: ###.###.###.### on port: 22
NX> 202 Authenticating user: nx
NX> 208 Using auth method: publickey
HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.0.0-74 - LFE
NX> 105 Hello NXCLIENT - Version 3.0.0
NX> 134 Accepted protocol: 3.0.0
NX> 105 Set shell_mode: shell
NX> 105 Set auth_mode: password
NX> 105 Login
NX> 101 User: username
NX> 102 Password: *********
NX> 103 Welcome to: session user: username
NX> 105 Listsession --user="username" --status="suspended\054running" --geometry="1400x1050x24+render" --type="unix-default"
NX> 127 Available sessions:

Display Type Session ID Options Depth Screen Status Session Name
------- ---------------- -------------------------------- -------- ----- -------------- ----------- ------------------------------

NX> 148 Server capacity: not reached for user: username
NX> 105 Start session with: --rootless="1" --virtualdesktop="0" --link="wan" --backingstore="1" --encryption="1" --cache="16M" --images="64M" --shmem="1" --shpix="1" --strict="0" --composite="1" --media="0" --session="session" --type="unix-default" --client="linux" --keyboard="pc102\057us" --screeninfo="1400x1022x24+render"
NX> 596 Error: Unexpected termination of nxagent process.
NX> 999 Bye.
NX> 280 Ignoring EOF on the monitored channel
Killed by signal 15.

Any idea?

Efo · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 494

Freenx did it!

It is slow but since I dont need to play with graphics, it suits perfectly my needs.

Thanks!

Efo

Moriah · Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:16 pm Post subject:

Another option would be gemsvnc. This vnc server captures the framebuffer from the hardware after the hardware accelerated rendering and then sends it over the network via the rfb protocol so it is viewed with a vncviewer -- preferably tightvnc.
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