odd screen corruption in VNC

[Glenn Holmer]

Setting up VNC, both machines running Debian Stretch with MATE (no VMs involved). Using tightvncserver, and xtightvncviewer as well as vinagre as client. In both cases I see some corruption of the upper MATE panel with red circles containing a number or letter (see attachment). Anyone have any idea what this is from? The remote desktop appears to function normally in every way I've tested.

​

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Glenn Holmer (Linux registered user #16682)
"After the vintage season came the aftermath -- and Cenbe."

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[Glenn Holmer]

On Tuesday, September 12, 2017 at 7:51:11 PM UTC-5, Glenn Holmer wrote:

Setting up VNC, both machines running Debian Stretch with MATE (no VMs involved). Using tightvncserver, and xtightvncviewer as well as vinagre as client. In both cases I see some corruption of the upper MATE panel with red circles containing a number or letter (see attachment). Anyone have any idea what this is from? The remote desktop appears to function normally in every way I've tested.

I managed to get a clearer picture of it; does this ring a bell with anybodyd? 

 

[Tom P]

Is this a picture of the original screen or the VNC remote version? What appears in the image above doesn't seem to be distorted. It appears to be a representation of the Scroll lock, Number lock, and Caps Lock states. Does any such state display appear on the original image? Perhaps the viewer adds that to clue you as to what it thinks those states are? Perhaps there's hardware acceleration or other effects applied to it on the native screen, which VNC doesn't reproduce properly?

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[Glenn Holmer]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 2:33 PM, Tom P <a50m...@gmail.com> wrote:

​

Is this a picture of the original screen or the VNC remote version?

Remote​.

 

​​

What appears in the image above doesn't seem to be distorted. It appears to be a representation of the Scroll lock, Number lock, and Caps Lock states. Does any such state display appear on the original image? Perhaps the viewer adds that to clue you as to what it thinks those states are? Perhaps there's hardware acceleration or other effects applied to it on the native screen, which VNC doesn't reproduce properly?

​It's distorted in that the background is supposed to match the rest of the panel. It doesn't always look the same; there are usually obvious artifacts like in my previous screenshot. None of that appears if I log in right on the host machine​; the panel background is consistent all the way across and there's nothing like those three indicators present. These "phantom indicators" do not change if I toggle caps lock or num lock, and I haven't been able to find anything about them in the tightvncserver documentation.

When the VNC server is running, I stop lightdm and vice versa for testing.

 

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 1:18 PM, Glenn Holmer <glenn....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, September 12, 2017 at 7:51:11 PM UTC-5, Glenn Holmer wrote:

Setting up VNC, both machines running Debian Stretch with MATE (no VMs involved). Using tightvncserver, and xtightvncviewer as well as vinagre as client. In both cases I see some corruption of the upper MATE panel with red circles containing a number or letter (see attachment). Anyone have any idea what this is from? The remote desktop appears to function normally in every way I've tested.

I managed to get a clearer picture of it; does this ring a bell with anybody? 

 

[Glenn Holmer]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 2:33 PM, Tom P <a50m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is this a picture of the original screen or the VNC remote version?

​This was for the upgrade of my web server from Debian Jessie to Stretch. The upgrade is complete now and everything is working correctly aside from this tolerable imperfection, so I guess I'll just have to live with it as one of life's unsolved mysteries. Interestingly, I'm running gitlab in a VM (KVM/qemu) on that machine (exact same startup scripts), and when I VNC to it, I don't see these phantoms from the netherworld...

[Glenn Holmer]

On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 9:53 AM, Glenn Holmer <glenn....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 2:33 PM, Tom P <a50m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is this a picture of the original screen or the VNC remote version?

​This was for the upgrade of my web server from Debian Jessie to Stretch.

 

Interestingly, I'm running gitlab in a VM (KVM/qemu) on that machine (exact same startup scripts), and when I VNC to it, I don't see these phantoms from the netherworld...

​Oh wait, the VM's still on Jessie...

[Glenn Holmer]

On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 10:34 AM, Glenn Holmer <glenn....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 9:53 AM, Glenn Holmer <glenn....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 2:33 PM, Tom P <a50m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is this a picture of the original screen or the VNC remote version?

​This was for the upgrade of my web server from Debian Jessie to Stretch.

 

Interestingly, I'm running gitlab in a VM (KVM/qemu) on that machine (exact same startup scripts), and when I VNC to it, I don't see these phantoms from the netherworld...

​Oh wait, the VM's still on Jessie...

​Ha! when I upgraded to Stretch, I saw ghostly apparitions again! There are spirits in my VM!

​P.S. Restoring my instance of GitLab CE from the backups off the previous VM went very smoothly. I highly recommend it if you want to run your own instance of something like that.​