Maximum PC

Hello all! I'm getting super-frustrated and thought I'd drop in and see if one of you guru's could lend a hand.

The situation is pretty simple. I need to remotely control a system running ubuntu 10. I've configured Remote Desktop, and it works but only if I've first logged into the system. The trouble is, this is an old blade server of mine, which resides in a closet due to excessive noise with no mouse, keyboard or monitor. Its sole purpose is to serve files, run emule, azureus, and I've also just installed LAMP for mucking about locally.

Can anyone tell me how I can do this? I realize there are more involved workarounds but surely there must be a way to have it just come up, ready for remote access like any PC or Mac does?? I'm not looking to jump through hoops, or have to first establish a putty session or the like to kick-off a listening service, I'd just like to be able to pull up tightVNC and connect when it goes down following updates or power outages, etc.

If it won't work, I'll just head on back to my previous configuration, but really want to work Linux more into my setup. This is probably the fifth time over the years I've tried to switch this server to Linux..it's always something stupid like this that turns into a constraint. I do hope I'm just missing something basic

Thank you in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this or to reply!!

Ian

PS - I have searched for this solution. I've weeded through a good twenty topics, which can be daunting to a relative Newb. If the answer is out there, I'm just not seeing it.

How about describing what happens when that machine isn't logged in?

Okay. Nothing happens. The remote desktop "service" is session-based as I understand it, and therefore isn't running until after I've logged into the linux box. I can give you the error message in tightVNC if you want, but the problem resides on the linux box. Once I've logged into Ubuntu, I can connect with no problems from the PC.

I also tried setting ubuntu to auto-login. Then it is a bit different, the PC can connect, gets prompted for the VNC password, but then just hangs - until the password is entered physically on the linux box.

Hope that makes sense

So you're using what...vino??

I believe it is Vino. It's actually built-in to Ubuntu and just labled as Remote Desktop. I also tried X-11 VNC I believe it was called and couldn't figure out a way to get that to run as a so-called service either..I'm considering just scrapping it and going with Vsphere instead...sure seems like overkill for what ought to be a fairly basic functionality

Since it seems to be the easiest thing for you to do, how have you tried to get vino to start automatically?

This should be nothing more then putting vino into the sesssion manager (System → Preferences → Sessions I beleive)

and I hope you removed VNC if you're no longer going with that

Yep, I did remove X11. The problem with the session manager, as far as I can tell is exactly that, you have to establish a session first. Until I log-in to the ubuntu system, remote desktop isn't running. I need it to just startup with the system and start listening without waiting for an account to log-in for it to start as logging in once I've got it back in the closet on just power and enthernet is a major ordeal

if you just need quick access (console) use ssh username@ipaddress enter password for that user then maybe run your server/client from console (use " &") at end of command line to make it stick when you close the console. Then run remote desktop as usual. putty for windows will give ssh access no problem. if you are doing it from a linux system, open console and type the above, this will also allow you to run gui based programs displaying to your linux desktop.