gnome-session not working with Xvnc

[vttom]

I'd like to run gnome-session inside an Xvnc server, but I can't seem to get it working. I've tried all sorts of things, but as far as I can tell, it's acting like it's not honoring the XAUTHORITY and DISPLAY environment variables.

My Debian release is bullseye (although I also had this problem with buster before making the switch).

I've installed the tightvncserver package on the Debian server. I ssh into the Debian server from my local machine, run vncserver, and connect to it with a vncviewer from the local machine. My .vnc/xstartup contains just "xterm&" so that I can experiment with running gnome-session manually.

On the xterm, command-line I can see that XAUTHORITY and DISPLAY are set:

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$ env | grep -E "XAUTH|DISPLAY"
XAUTHORITY=/home/tchadwic/.Xauthority
DISPLAY=:1
$ xauth list
NUC10:1  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  9d566b94d5da7985952701f8469eb0d3
NUC10/unix:1  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  9d566b94d5da7985952701f8469eb0d3

When I use ps to look for the vnc server I see:

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Xtightvnc :1 -desktop X -auth /home/tchadwic/.Xauthority <remaining arguments trimmed>

So it's using the right xauth and DISPLAY settings.

Now when I run gnome-session...

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$ gnome-session --debug
gnome-session-binary[4655]: DEBUG(+): Enabling debugging
gnome-session-binary[4655]: GLib-DEBUG(+): posix_spawn avoided (fd close requested) 
gnome-session-binary[4655]: DEBUG(+): hardware acceleration check failed: Child process exited with code 1
gnome-session-binary[4655]: GLib-DEBUG(+): posix_spawn avoided (fd close requested) 
gnome-session-binary[4655]: WARNING: software acceleration check failed: Child process exited with code 1
gnome-session-binary[4655]: GLib-DEBUG(+): posix_spawn avoided (fd close requested) 
Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

** (gnome-session-failed:4667): WARNING **: 10:45:16.843: Cannot open display: 
Terminated

The "Connection refused" error looks like the type of message you get if xauth isn't setup right. The "Cannot open display" error looks like the type of error you get if DISPLAY is not setup right. But I'm pretty sure I have those correct.

One last thing... I also tried gnome-session --disable-acceleration-check. That took care of the acceleration check failed messages, but I still get the "Connection refused" and "Cannot open display" errors and no desktop.

Any ideas?

[vttom]

One more thing. I installed the mwm package, and can run the mwm window manager just fine. I can launch apps and whatnot. So the server seems quite functional. Just doesn't want to talk to gnome for some reason.

[vttom]

OK. Post withdrawn.

I uninstalled the tightvncserver and installed tigervnc-standalone-server and now everything works just fine (although, I had to do a little sleuthing to figure out I need to do "vncserver -localhost false" when launching the server, otherwise it defaults to rejecting vnc viewer connections from other hosts on the LAN).