Graphical Desktop with keyboard & display

[Bernard Fischer]

I have vnc working fine with a GUI on my BB AI.  But if it plug in a display and keyboard/mouse i get a text terminal and can't start up a graphical desktop.  startx is not found.

What packages do I need to install for that? If it works over VNC why doesn't it work directly?

thanks

[Tarmo]

Hi Bernard

On Monday, 15 June 2020 00:13:12 UTC+3, Bernard Fischer wrote:

I have vnc working fine with a GUI on my BB AI.  But if it plug in a display and keyboard/mouse i get a text terminal and can't start up a graphical desktop.  startx is not found.

What packages do I need to install for that? If it works over VNC why doesn't it work directly?

One of the easiest ways to get started with graphical desktops in Debian is to install a "task-XXX-desktop" metapackage for your favourite desktop environment XXX, which pulls in the whole kaboodle via dependencies. It will probably include some packages which you don't want, so feel free to prune later.

E.g. for installing the light-weight LXDE environment you'd do this:

$ sudo apt install task-lxde-desktop

The reason you don't see a graphical environment when plugging in a monitor is you don't have a display manager installed (https://wiki.debian.org/DisplayManager). The task you install will include a "friendly" display manager, e.g. in case of LXDE it'll be the lightdm. You might need to restart the board (or at least the display manager service) after you've plugged in a monitor post-boot.

--

Kind regards,

Tarmo

[evilwulfie]

I am fairly sure he has a display manager installed as VNC will not function
without one.

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[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Sun, 14 Jun 2020 14:13:12 -0700 (PDT), in
gmane.comp.hardware.beagleboard.user Bernard Fischer

<benjohnfischer-Re5...@public.gmane.org> wrote:

>I have vnc working fine with a GUI on my BB AI. But if it plug in a
>display and keyboard/mouse i get a text terminal and can't start up a
>graphical desktop. startx is not found.
>

Off hand, that behavior sounds much like you have X-clients installed,
but not an X-server; the VNC software on the Beagle may be acting as the
server when it is running. cf:
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch07.en.html

>What packages do I need to install for that? If it works over VNC why
>doesn't it work directly?

See above answer... Your X clients (applications) are sending drawing
commands to the VNC server on the Beagle, which relays them to the VNC
client on the other computer for display. Note: the desktop manager is a
/client/ application. {Note: the usage of server/client WRT VNC is opposite
of the usage for pure X Window. In X, the /display/ doing the rendering is
the server, clients send commands to the server over the network -- But
with VNC, the software on the Beagle is intercepting the commands and
reformulating them for VNC network protocol}

On a BBB with IoT image (and stripping out a lot of extraneous
packages):

debian@beaglebone:~$ apt search "x server"
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
tigervnc-xorg-extension/stable 1.9.0+dfsg-3+deb10u1 armhf
Virtual network computing X server extension

weirdx/stable 1.0.32-7 all
X server in Java

x11-xserver-utils/stable 7.7+8 armhf
X server utilities

xdmx/stable 2:1.20.4-1 armhf
distributed multihead X server

xfonts-biznet-100dpi/stable 3.0.0-26 all
100 dpi BIZNET ISO-8859-2 fonts for X servers

xfonts-biznet-75dpi/stable 3.0.0-26 all
75 dpi BIZNET ISO-8859-2 fonts for X servers

xfonts-biznet-base/stable 3.0.0-26 all
Standard BIZNET ISO-8859-2 fonts for X servers

xinit/stable 1.4.0-1 armhf
X server initialisation tool

xnest/stable 2:1.20.4-1 armhf
Nested X server

xserver-common/stable 2:1.20.4-1 all
common files used by various X servers

xserver-xephyr/stable 2:1.20.4-1 armhf
nested X server

xserver-xorg/stable 1:7.7+19 armhf
X.Org X server

xserver-xorg-core/stable 2:1.20.4-1 armhf
Xorg X server - core server

xserver-xorg-input-all/stable 1:7.7+19 armhf
X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage

xserver-xorg-video-fbdev/stable 1:0.5.0-1 armhf
X.Org X server -- fbdev display driver

xvfb/stable 2:1.20.4-1 armhf
Virtual Framebuffer 'fake' X server

xwayland/stable 2:1.20.4-1 armhf
Xwayland X server





--
Dennis L Bieber

[Tarmo]

On Monday, 15 June 2020 16:57:30 UTC+3, evilwulfie wrote:

I am fairly sure he has a display manager installed as VNC will not function

without one.

AFAIK VNC can be configured to work either independently or with a display manager. Depends on how Bernard has configured the VNC server on his BB, which he didn't specify.

If he connects with VNC directly to a display manager, e.g. GDM, then yes he should see the same GDM login window on native terminal. If it's not there, perhaps it helps to walk through the virtual terminals Ctrl-Alt-F1 to Ctrl-Alt-F7 - it might show up somewhere.

--

Kind regards,

Tarmo

[Mala Dies]

Hello,

I am not sure if you have figured out this issue yet or not. Please view this article. It is a bit lengthy to post the entire article in this post: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-vnc-on-debian-10.

There is a section on it that describes how to install xfce4 on Debian 10 (GUI), a section to set up for booting into that GUI, and I think it may help your cause.

Seth