Desktop won't fill entire display on Retina MacBook Pro

[Charles]

I'm using connecting TigerVNC Viewer on a MacBook to TigerVNC server on a CentOS Linux box. The MacBook's screen is Retina 2560x1600 native resolution and I have it set to the recommended 1440x900. I also have two 1080p monitors connected. On the server, I specify "-geometry 1440x90".

When I start up vncviewer, it opens on the Mac's build-in screen. The window takes up the full 1440x900, but the CentOS desktop is squeezed into the bottom left quarter. That desktop is completely unresponsive. I can't get it to respond to any typing or clicking.

If I drag vncviewer's window to one of the 1080p monitor, the vncviewer window takes up the full screen, and the CentOS desktop resizes to fit the entire windows. CentOS reports the desktop's display is 1920x1080

If I drag the vncview window back to my built-in Mac display, it is back to being scrunched in the bottom left corner. But with the CentOS display settings panel still open, I can see that CentOS is reporting a display of 1440x900.

Then on the Mac, if I change the Mac's built-in display to be 1680x1050, the CentOS desktop reports being 1680x1050, but still is scrunched in the bottom left corner. It isn't scrunched as tightly, though, when the Mac's display was set to 1440x900.

To make a long story short, it appears that vncviewer is correctly reporting to the configured display size to vnc server, and vnc server is changing the CentOS desktop size to match. But when vncviewer renders that desktop on the built-in display it is using actual Retina pixels, not the virtual pixels it should be using.

Here are some screenshots of the three cases. Is there something I can do differently? Or maybe this is a bug?

Client:

Apple MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.3 13" Mid-2017

(https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i5-2.3-13-mid-2017-retina-display-no-touch-bar-specs.html)

Native Resolution: 2560x1600

Recommended Resolution: 1440x900

Max Recommended Resolution: 1680x1050

TigerVNC Viewer 64-bit v1.9.0 on macOS 10.14.6 Mojave

Server:

CentOS 7 Linux

tigervnc-server.x86_64                  1.8.0-13.el7

[Charles]

I'm wondering if this is a 64-bit versus 32-bit thing. I've just tested the pre-built binaries linked from tigervnc.org, and 1.18.0, 1.19 beta and 1.19.0 all display fine on my Mac Retina display. The about box on 1.19.0 says it is 32-bit.

The version I'm having trouble with is from homebrew. I installed it with

brew install tiger-vnc. The About box reports this as being 64-bit 1.19.0. 

Is something broken in the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit? Or maybe the homebrew formula for this is broken?

[Pierre Ossman]

On 02/09/2019 00:51, Charles wrote:
>
> When I start up vncviewer, it opens on the Mac's build-in screen. The
> window takes up the full 1440x900, but the CentOS desktop is squeezed into
> the bottom left quarter. That desktop is completely unresponsive. I can't
> get it to respond to any typing or clicking.
>

I'm afraid it's a bug in the FLTK used in the homebrew build. Please see:

https://github.com/TigerVNC/tigervnc/issues/805
https://github.com/TigerVNC/tigervnc/issues/867

I'm afraid we can't really do much about it from our end. Please ask the
homebrew packager to use an older FLTK, or FLTK to provide a fix for this.

Regards
--
Pierre Ossman Software Development
Cendio AB https://cendio.com
Teknikringen 8 https://twitter.com/ThinLinc
583 30 Linköping https://facebook.com/ThinLinc
Phone: +46-13-214600

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