VNC Instructions for Distance Students

This page is meant for distance learners in EE department who need to frequently access course software on Leland computer system. If these instructions do not work, please make sure that the corporate firewall on your company-side is not blocking the connection. VNC is not the only option, there are many other alternatives including X-windows servers like Exceed, X-win32 etc. Please contact SCPD TA in EE with comments or sugegstions about this page.

Acknowledgement: This document was adopted from CS107 webpage

Summary:

VNC is an easy to use and a freely available application for remote x-windows sessions. VNC comes in two parts: the server, which is already installed on Stanford's leland computer at /usr/pubsw/bin/vncserver, and the client, which you need to download yourself. Following is a summary of the steps that you will need to follow to start a VNC session.

a) SSH remote login to Stanford unix computers using PuTTy or secureCRT or any other secure client.
b) Start a vncserver session on the remote unix computer.
c) Note down the vncserver output number e.g. elaine2.stanford.edu:13 
c) Set the vnc password on the remote unix computer.  This needs to be done one time only.
d) Start vnc viewer on the local PC or Mac.
e) Enter the destination e.g. elaine2.stanford.edu:13 and enter password.
f) The x-session should pop up on your local machine.


Details:
Following are the detailed steps required to use VNC.

  
Download and install PuTTy or SecureCRT on the PC.  SecureCRT is available via 
  PCstanford with a valid SUNetID.  PuTTy is available as a single 
  executable file PuTTy.exe.  Mac users should use Samson for 
  Macintosh in conjuction with Mac-Leland available through ITSS.

  
Download the VNC package from http://www.realvnc.com/download.html. 
  You will need to provide some info in order to download the package.   Decompress it 
  as necessary, and then discard everything except the VNC viewer application. 
  
Telnet/SSH to either an elaine, epic, myth, or saga using PuTTY, SecureCRT 
  or Samson. Before you use the vncserver the first time, you may need to create 
  the directory ~/.vnc so that vnc can store a password. Use the following 
  procedure if you need to create this folder.  Change to your home directory and 
  create this directory. 
    elaine2> cd
    elaine2> mkdir .vnc

  
Before you use the vncserver for the first time, you'll need to create a 
  password so that only you can connect to your vncserver. While still telneting 
  to a leland machine, type vncpasswd at the command prompt to 
  set the password. You only need to do this once, but you're free to run it 
  whenever you want or need to choose a new password. 
  
Every time you want to work remotely, you'll need to telnet to a machine 
  and run vncserver to start the VNC server application. The 
  server will return a virtual screen number for you. For illustration purposes, 
  assume it's elaine2.stanford.edu:25. 
  
Launch the VNC viewer application on your local machine, specifying the 
  server name and the virtual screen number: 
  elaine2.stanford.edu:25. You'll be asked for your password, and 
  provided you enter it correctly, a large, virtual X Window will appear. 
  
Back in the original telnet window, you'll need to type the following: 
   elaine2> setenv DISPLAY elaine2:25 
   elaine2> mwm& 
   elaine2> xterm& 
  and up will pop an xterm window on the client side. Depending on how 
  your configuration files are setup, you may only need to do the 
  setenv portion of the above commands. You can then do whatever it 
  is you do on Unix, with very few exceptions. 
  
When you are all done, you need to close your client. You should also be a 
  good citizen and stop the server, lest it run forever. You do this by typing 
   vncserver -kill :25
  or whatever virtual graphics port you were given when you started the 
  server in the first place. For more documentation on vnc, visit the RealVNC website. 





Jawad Nasrullah /

    scpdta@ee.stanford.edu



Last modified: Thu Apr 1 2004