xserver-xspice to remotely connect to my Debian desktop

[Malte]

Hi,

I am trying to setup the xserver-xspice package to remotely connect to my
Debian desktop. It claims to be more bandwidth efficient compared to VNC
and there is even an Android client for the Spice protocol. I can get the
xspice server started just fine. But I am having problems with the display
manager.

In all cases described below, when I use Spicy (spice client) to connect to
the desktop from a different machine, it connects fine, but only shows a
black screen, indicating (from the documentation), that no display manager
is running.

How can I get a display manager to see and connect to the xspice-xserver,
so I can see it, when I connect to the remote machine? Also: Can you
reproduce the issue on your desktop?

Full description:

I am currently on Debian 9 and pulled the xserver-xspice package from sid
using apt pinning and conservative settings. My hardware is an Intel
Skylake desktop computer using the Skylake gpu.

/etc/apt/preferences

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,n=stretch
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: -10

Documentation and howtos on running XSpice are rather limited. I found and
used those two:

http://ghanima.net/doku.php?id=wiki:ghanima:xspiceservercontainer

https://s3hh.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/xspice-in-containers/

I thus start the XSpice server using this command:

Xspice --xsession slim --config spiceqxl.xorg.conf --port 5920
--disable-ticketing --tls-port 0 :10

I tried a bunch of different display managers (sddm, xdm, gdm, wdm) and
different settings for the vt, from :2 up to :40. When using the slim
display manager, I get the following error message:

/usr/bin/X11/xauth: file /var/run/slim.auth does not exist
Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 keyinterface_get_command: native
_XSERVTransSocketUNIXCreateListener: ...SocketCreateListener() failed
_XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: server already running
(EE)
Fatal server error:
(EE) Cannot establish any listening sockets - Make sure an X server isn't
already running(EE)
(EE)

All the other display managers do not work either, but also do not show
this error message. Thus I tried stopping the display manager running
locally on the desktop using this command, before I start Xspice:

systemctl stop sddm

Thus no X11 is running locally. Albeit I would like to both run a local X
for local users and also connect remote users at the same time. Now when I
use the command (same one again):

Xspice --xsession slim --config spiceqxl.xorg.conf --port 5920
--disable-ticketing --tls-port 0 :10

Xorg and the display manager (slim) come up on the monitor connected to the
desktop, just like the "normal" xserver.

And again, as pointed out above, I only get a black screen, when I connect
with Spicy. The display manager seems to only display on the locally
connected monitor no matter what.

Thanks for reading,

Malte

[Nicolas George]

Post by Malte
I am trying to setup the xserver-xspice package to remotely connect to my
Debian desktop. It claims to be more bandwidth efficient compared to VNC

You can also try xpra in « shadow » mode.

But I have to ask: are you sure that « remotely connect to [your] Debian
desktop » is really what suits your needs best?

I suspect most people who are looking for a remote desktop system have
heard of the feature from the Windows world, and Windows being itself
can only send the whole desktop over the wire. But they do not realize
that Unix and Linux systems have many ways of achieving the tasks that
can be done with a remote desktop, and some of these ways would probably
be more convenient for them, depending on their exact needs: just access
the files, attach to an existing application or run a new one, etc.

Regards,

[Malte Schmidt-Tychsen]

Hello Nicolas,

thank you very much for reading my post and your kind answer. I had a look
at xpra and it does look very interesting. Though it does not fit my
current user case. Did you try the Xspice setup with Debian 9? When you set
up /etc/preferences like I described (and have the sid sources in
/etc/sources.lis) and do:

apt-get -t sid install xserver-xspice

it will only pull that package from sid and not mess up a stable Debian
install at all. I would love to hear how if you get the same results that I
do.

Regards,

Malte

Post by Malte
I am trying to setup the xserver-xspice package to remotely connect to my
Debian desktop. It claims to be more bandwidth efficient compared to VNC

You can also try xpra in « shadow » mode.
But I have to ask: are you sure that « remotely connect to [your] Debian
desktop » is really what suits your needs best?
I suspect most people who are looking for a remote desktop system have
heard of the feature from the Windows world, and Windows being itself
can only send the whole desktop over the wire. But they do not realize
that Unix and Linux systems have many ways of achieving the tasks that
can be done with a remote desktop, and some of these ways would probably
be more convenient for them, depending on their exact needs: just access
the files, attach to an existing application or run a new one, etc.
Regards,
--
Nicolas George