VNC Server on Beagle Board

Hello, Has anyone managed to get a VNC Server running on the OMAP3 port?

I am happy to offer developers remote access to a Beagle Board for testing purposes, and I’m looking for the best way of doing it. As yet VNC seems the obvious choice.

If anyone has a better suggestion, please let me know!

Rob.

You don’t say what you’ve tried (URLs, etc), and if there’s some specific problem. If there is, then you should let the developers/here know, so it can be addressed.

I’ve never got a VNC server running reliably on any RISC OS machine. They always crash within the first minute or so of use.

Rob & Steve:

Have you tried this VNC server? It’s one which has been passed around between various authors over the years. In fact, I’m fairly certain that someone else has taken over development of it since I made my changes, but I can’t immediately find any newer versions so I’ll just link you to mine. It supports the desktop resize protocol and understands hardware scrolling, so you should be able to change screen modes or interact with the command line without the server failing (I’ve even been able to play Zool using it, although I doubt the framerate was very good!)

Of course the version on my site is a few years old, so you’ll probably have to recompile it with the latest version of GCC to avoid running into alignment exceptions on the beagleboard.

I’ve tried various VNC server apps on my Risc PC, I’ve never got a Windows VNC client to connect. (I can ping the Risc PC, just never get prompted for a password, then it times out.)

Many thanks for the link Jeffrey, I’ll try it out on my Beagle either later today or tomorrow morning.

I’ll post my results back here once I’ve had a play!

The GCCSDK developers will adopt any RISC OS OSS software which is demonstrably abandoned, although we’d prefer to work with interested parties to help them update them, on the basis that giving people tools to do work is more effective in the long run. We can take a look at that VNCServe, but we presently have a backlog of about 4 such projects to bring up to date.

If you think any software is such a candidate, then by all means enter it into the bug tracking system:

http://www.riscos.info/index.php?title=Special:AWCforum&action=st/id126/Bug_reporting_now_open_on_riscos.info

I have tried the VNC Server from the link provided by Jeffrey. (I have allignment exceptions turned off, I’ve not tried recompiling the source for vncserver.) The module vncserver loads and I run the command *vncserv_start 5900 12345

When I try to connect from a Windows PC, I always get the error “Connection Refused” I have tried RealVNC, TightVNC & UltraVNC. I can ping the Beagle Board from the Windows machine, and vice versa.

I get the exact same problem when I try to connect to my Risc PC using the same vncserver. (I also tried booting an Ubuntu CD, and connecting to the Risc PC & Beagle Board, I got the same problem!)

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Rob,

Are you running VNCServer on the Beagleboard system in 16M colour mode as this is not supported. Change the Beagleboard to 32K mode , stop and restart the VNC Server and you should be able to connect.

Thanks Doug! That now connects!

I just can’t see the RISC OS Desktop in the VNC client, if I move the mouse in the VNC window, the mouse moves on RISC OS, it just won’t draw the desktop.

I’ll try some other clients and connection options then report back. Getting closer though!

OK, so perhaps suggesting a quick recompilation of vnc_serv wasn’t such a good idea – I’ve just realised that it relies on OSLib, so whoever needs to recompile the VNC server will also need to recompile OSLib if they want it to work with GCC 4/the beagleboard. When I get a chance (probably sometime next week) I’ll try recompiling OSLib and release an updated version of the server.

I just can’t see the RISC OS Desktop in the VNC client, if I move the mouse in the VNC window, the mouse moves on RISC OS, it just won’t draw the desktop.

I’ve just tried it on my beagleboard and I get the same problem. It looks like it transfers the first few columns of pixels and then stops. This will almost certainly be a LDR/STR alignment issue (the server works fine when running on my Iyonix).

GCC 4 + OSlib/Desklib is no problem with GCCSDK cross compiler. But John and I haven’t quite got around to natively usable versions of those with GCC 4.

Glad someone else got the same problem, and it wasn’t me doing something stupid!