[FreeNX-kNX] CentOS5 Freenx installation won't start and /var/log/nxserver.log is empty

[Joseph Thames]

Hello,

I am configuring two 64-bit VPS platforms for KDE-based SaaS products, one
Ubuntu 8.04 and one CentOS 5. After about two weeks work, with assistance of
Marcelo Shima, and my VPS vendor, I finally got Freenx working on the Ununtu
platform. The problem was pseudo-terminals, and we had to disable udev, as
Ubuntu's *expect *apparently requires static ptys in /dev.

On the client-side I am using the NXclient downloaded from the NoMachine
website. I have now tested and configured the KDE 3.5 desktop on the Ubuntu
server from my 32-bit Fedora 8 client box.

So far I have been unable to login to the CentOS 5 Freenx, from the Fedora
client. The client-side message was:

The NX service is not available or the NX access was disabled on host
174.136.0.134

And the details were:

NX> 203 NXSSH running with pid: 10548
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: 174.136.0.134 on port: 22
NX> 202 Authenticating user: nx
NX> 208 Using auth method: publickey
NX> 204 Authentication failed.

Here are some of the things I have tried:

   1. NX_LOG_LEVEL=6 (debugging), but I get an empty /var/log/nxserver.log,
   even though it's owner is nx and group is  root, and I chmod'd it to 660.
   2. SESSION_LOG_CLEAN=0 to enable the temporary log
   ($HOME/.nx/C-<hostname>-<display>-<session_id>), but the .nx subdirectory
   does not appear after I tried the client login,
   3. From an ssh session of user 'bear' on the server, I executed:
    echo "<password>" | /usr/bin/nxnode-login -- ssh "bear" "22" >>
   "/usr/bin/nxnode" --check
   response:
   -bash: /usr/bin/nxnode: Permission denied
   4. Also from user 'bear' on the server:
   [bear at xeon ~]$ nxagent :1000
   response:
   NXAGENT - Version 3.2.0

   Copyright (C) 2001, 2007 NoMachine.
   See http://www.nomachine.com/ for more information.

   Info: Agent running with pid '31880'.
   Session: Starting session at 'Fri Feb  6 10:11:00 2009'.
   Error: Aborting session with 'Unable to open display '''.
   Session: Aborting session at 'Fri Feb  6 10:11:00 2009'.
   Session: Session aborted at 'Fri Feb  6 10:11:00 2009'.

I installed Freenx on the CentOS VPS as recommend from the CentOS wiki Howto
on FreeNX. <http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/FreeNX?highlight=%28Freenx%29>
Now I am about to try its next recommendation (2. Key-based authentication),
disabling ssh Password Authentication and setting
ENABLE_PASSDB_AUTHENTICATION="1" in node.conf to utilize the PASSDB
authentication approach.; then requiring --adduser and --passwd for each
user.

I didn't have to do this on Unbuntu. So I would rather not, if there is
another way.

Any other recommendations, anyone?

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Joseph 'Bear' Thames
Meta Science Foundation
(505) 977-9024 - Cell Phone
Joseph_Thames at metacalculus.net
beartham at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/freenx-knx/attachments/20090206/09f38b3b/attachment.html>