On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Troy.A Johnson wrote:

> Mike Miller <mbmiller at taxa.epi.umn.edu> wrote:
>
>> What is the advantage of inetd?  Is it that it creates a new VNC 
>> session if none exists?  Does it work in the ordinary VNC way if the 
>> VNC session is already running?
>>
>> I just skip the inetd business and start VNC from an SSH prompt command 
>> line.  Once it is running, I connect in the usual VNC way.  I've had 
>> one session running for 500 days on a Solaris box.  It was ultimately 
>> interrupted by a power failure.
>
> You would use the VNC over SSH tunnel option (and I do) if you want to 
> keep it simple (and I do).

Are you saying that with inetd you can automate the ssh tunneling part of 
the login process?  That would be very cool.  Getting the tunneling set up 
is always an annoyance.


> If you want it to act like a Terminal Server, and create new sessions 
> for users as they connect (and hopefully go away when they log out), the 
> inetd option is a reasonably simple way to do it.

I get that now.  So terminal server isn't persistent -- the session dies 
when you log out.

For those unfamiliar with VNC:  One of the coolest things about it is that 
you can maintain a session, the state of which is stored on the server. 
If your connection is killed or you just want to go work from a different 
machine (e.g., at home, at the office, in the library, in a different 
city), you can just connect again and you will see that everything is 
exactly where you left it, your cursor blinking in the same place in the 
same window, etc.

Mike