VNC^® Wayland Developer Preview

RealVNC are pleased to make available a free Developer Preview* of our flagship VNC product that enables VNC Server to run in a Wayland environment, and remote desktops provided by the Weston reference compositor. Feedback welcome!

* The Developer Preview is free for the Wayland development community to use, but please note it is provided "as is" and without warranty of any kind. Deployment is not recommended in a production environment.

Getting started

1. Checkout and build the Wayland master branch. Note the Developer Preview was built against commit 113aac5.
2. Checkout the Weston master branch, and build it with screen sharing, for example ./autogen.sh --enable-screen-sharing. Note the Developer Preview was built against commit 32abdbb.

Note: There are some reference instructions for these steps on a virtual machine running Ubuntu 14.04 Server here.

3. Download VNC 5.2, and install VNC Server by running a command such as sudo dpkg -i VNC Server.deb or
   sudo rpm -U VNC Server.rpm.
4. Apply the license key to VNC Server by running the command sudo vnclicense -add key.vnclicense

Note: The license key is initially valid until 31st December 2014. All features of VNC with an Enterprise license are included, except those listed here.

5. Copy the three Developer Preview files to a path location such as /usr/local/bin, and make sure they are executable.
6. Make sure your user is a member of the weston-launch and video groups.
7. Edit ~/.config/weston.ini as follows:
   [core]
modules=screen-share.so
[screen-share]
command=vncserver-wayland


Running VNC Server

You can run VNC Server in User Mode or in Virtual Mode. Restrictions.

Establishing a connection from VNC Viewer

1. Download VNC Viewer to any supported Windows, Mac, Linux, or UNIX computer.
2. Enter the IP address or hostname of the Linux computer, for example 192.168.0.187. Note that:
   • This is likely to be sufficient to connect to VNC Server in User Mode, since by default it listens on the registered port for VNC, 5900.
   • You must qualify the network address with a display number to connect to VNC Server in Virtual Mode, for example 192.168.0.187:1. The display number is reported on the console when VNC Server starts.

   If you are connecting over the Internet, you must configure the firewall and port forward the router protecting the Linux computer, and enter the public network address to connect.

3. To authenticate to VNC Server, enter the system credentials you normally use to log on to your user account on the Linux computer.

Restrictions and notes

This section lists differences between the Wayland and a standard X-based installation of VNC 5.2 with an Enterprise license:

• VNC Server in Service Mode (vncserver-x11-serviced) is not available.
• The VNC Server in Virtual Mode daemon (vncserver-virtuald) is not available.
• Printing, file transfer, chat, and copy and paste text are not available.
• Only the system credentials of the VNC Server owner (the user starting VNC Server) can be used to authenticate to VNC Server. To enable other VNC Viewer users to connect without sharing the owner's system credentials, change the authentication scheme.
• VNC Server can only remote a single output (screen). In User Mode, only the screen containing the mouse cursor at the point you started VNC Server is remoted. In Virtual Mode, a single screen is created, the resolution of which can be controlled by appending -geometry WxH to the vncserver-virtual-wayland start-up command.
• The cursor is currently captured as part of the screen image. Optimally, it should be captured separately to avoid triggering a screen update when the cursor moves.
• VNC Server dialogs draw their own window decorations, since by default the Weston compositor does not. If you are using a different desktop environment that can draw window decorations, disable those of VNC Server by specifying the WlClientDecorations VNC parameter in the file ~/.vnc/config.d/vncserverui-wayland-mode.
• Each connected VNC Viewer user gets their own mouse cursor, which can be operated independently of other connected users' cursors, and that of the Linux computer.

Feedback and support

Please contact us to provide feedback, ask a question, or report a problem.

Release notes

• 5.2.0.5064, released 8th July 2014

  First release.