Freenx-server Instructions
Contents
Description
Are you tired of switching keyboards to go back and forth between your host desktop and your odroid? freenx-server may be of interest to you.
NoMachine [1] provides a commercial product that among many things, provides a fast replacement for VNC. Since the low-level components are GPL'd, they make the source available. The nxserver is not free -- but there is a free GPL'd version: http://freenx.berlios.de/
The nxserver provides a complete desktop from a remote target, just like VNC. You can disconnect from the remote session and re-connect later. The desktop and any running applications stay active.
Reference Wiki
This Wiki: www.taiowiki.com , did all the heavy lifting to provide build instructions for the Raspberry Pi. I built freenx-server from source, using the instructions with a hard-float toolchain specifically for the odroid.
I created a debian binary package on top of my debian-wheezy-gnome-6 release and did clean-machine testing to make sure it would work out-of-the-box.
I only modified sources as mentioned in the Wiki mentioned above.
Dependent Packages
Install some dependent packages first:
sudo apt-get install binutils openssh-server xterm expect tcl8.5
Installation
Check your /etc/ssh/sshd_config file. Some may say authorized_keys instead of authorized_keys2. Some may have AuthorizedKeysFile commented out.
AuthorizedKeysFile authorized_keys2
sudo wget http://http://odroid.us/odroid/users/osterluk/freenx-server/freenx-server-0.7.3-1-armhf.deb sudo dpkg -i freenx-server-0.7.3-1-armhf.deb
You can find the as-built sources in http://http://odroid.us/odroid/users/osterluk/freenx-server/ in case you need to make changes.
Connect from Host
Use nxclient on your host to connect to the odroid. nxclients are available for Linux and Windows hosts.
Debian
debian-wheezy-gnome-6.1 works, debian-wheezy-xfce-6.1 works
Here is the nx client top-level dialog (on the host)
Ubuntu
There is some issue when trying to connect to ubuntu -- the network connection gets bumped and nxclient gives up...
NXPROXY - Version 3.5.0 Copyright (C) 2001, 2011 NoMachine. See http://www.nomachine.com/ for more information. Info: Proxy running in client mode with pid '14882'. Session: Starting session at 'Wed Mar 27 20:11:08 2013'. Info: Connection with remote proxy completed. Warning: Unrecognized session type 'unix-desktop'. Assuming agent session. Info: Using ADSL link parameters 512/24/1/0. Info: Using cache parameters 4/4096KB/8192KB/8192KB. Info: Using pack method 'adaptive-7' with session 'unix-desktop'. Info: Using ZLIB data compression 1/1/32. Info: Using ZLIB stream compression 4/4. Info: No suitable cache file found. Info: Forwarding X11 connections to display ':0.0'. Info: Listening to font server connections on port '11000'. Session: Session started at 'Wed Mar 27 20:11:08 2013'. Info: Established X server connection. Info: Using shared memory parameters 1/2048K. Error: Connection with remote peer broken. Error: Please check the state of your network and retry. Session: Terminating session at 'Wed Mar 27 20:11:13 2013'. Session: Session terminated at 'Wed Mar 27 20:11:13 2013'.