Judson's Notes

At first I was trying to set a VNC server using the "VNC - Incoming Connection" option in the Remmina Remote Desktop Client. I learned that this really isn't what you would expect, it's a reverse VNC connection which lets Remmina wait for an incoming VNC connection from a server, not a client.

I want to set up a true VNC server, which can be done using vino or x11vnc. This community documentation page from Ubuntu was most helpful. What worked best for me was x11vnc:

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

After installation, set up a password and then start the vnc server

x11vnc -storepasswd
x11vnc -safer -usepw -forever -accept -popup:0

Those options will require a password and require that the user on the server computer accept the incoming connect by sending a popup to the server display #0. This worked easily on the first try for me, using the Remote Desktop Client to connect to my server. For local connections only, this works well:

x11vnc -allow 192.168.2. -usepw -forever -safer

By default, a VNC server will listen for connections from a VNC viewer on TCP port "5900+N", where N is the "Display Number" (usually just zero). So a VNC server setup for Display-0 will listen on TCP-5900, Display-1 is TCP-5901, etc.

Additionally, the VNC server will listen for connections from a web-browser on TCP port "5800+N", where N is as above. If you point a web-browser to this port, the VNC server will automatically provide a Java VNC viewer that runs right in your web-browser. This Java Viewer will then exchange data with the VNC Server on the same ports a normal VNC Viewer would use: "5900+N".

Another option for a VNC server is to use vino, which can be found in the Menu, under Internet, "Desktop Sharing". If you can't find it there (which I can't), you can start it with:

vino-preferences

The setup is pretty straightforward, but I couldn't easily get the server to work, so I stuck with x11vnc, which worked perfectly out of the box. Combined with my dynamic dns setup, it's perfect! (of course, I had to open the VNC ports on my router and forward them to the right computer on my local network.)