[FreeNX-kNX] freenx and real X-session

[Mario Becroft]

Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> writes:

> I thought that a new feature in 7.3 was the ability to shadow existing 
> sessions, including the one on the console.  I've been able to get 
> multiple connections to an independent freenx sessions, but have not 
> succeeded in connecting remotely to the one on the console.

Could be--it appears that the design of the shadowing allows this (from
what I can see, it should in theory be able to shadow any x server), but
I don't believe the current freenx actually provides a way to shadow the
"console." I may be wrong about this though. I have to admit, I have not
tried it myself, I just assumed it was not supported, since I didn't
notice anything in nxserver about listing a local X server as available
for shadowing.

> Is there a way to configure so this does work?

It should just be matter of invoking nxagent in the shadowing mode, and
specifying the machine's local X server (probably :0.0) as the
display. I have not experimented with invoking nxagent directly (outside
of freenx/nxclient) so I am unsure of exactly how to do
this. Alternatively, freenx could be modified to list a local X server
as an available display for shadowing, and then you could simply login
with a normal nxclient and shadow it like any other session. Someone
more familiar with freenx development might be able to comment on this
more accurately--maybe it does already allow this!

The performance will still be very poor compared to directly connecting
to an nx session, though.

>> 3. The third way is actually the same as 2., but if you are using Xorg
>> as your local X server, there is a module directly providing a VNC
>> server mirroring your local screen. This works like 2., but will be a
>> bit faster. You could look up on the web how to configure this feature.
>
> I've had trouble with this in the past, but it seemed to be related to 
> the real hardward driver and perhaps has been fixed recently.

Yes, I can imagine this being problematic. Using x11vnc is highly
reliable, but rather slow as it has to poll the framebuffer for
updates. However, x11vnc does this in the most efficient possible way
and is extremely good at what it does.

-- 
Mario Becroft <mb at gem.win.co.nz>