vncserver fails to start

VNC is useful when you want to run DBCA or some other tool in GUI mode. If the connection between your computer and server fails, running application in VNC continues working and you can reconnect to your previous session.

I have noticed very strange behavior of VNC on my Linux 7.5, it maybe the same on other versions.

Problem:

Start VNC:

$ vncserver -geometry 1024×1024

New ‘stbyracq.example.com:1 (oracle)’ desktop is stbyracq.example.com:1

Starting applications specified in /home/oracle/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/oracle/.vnc/stbyracq.example.com:1.log

Check VNC process:

$ ps -ef|grep vnc
root 20629 2570 0 16:36 pts/1 00:00:00 grep –color=auto vnc

Shows only GREP process.

Let’s check the log file:

$ cat /home/oracle/.vnc/stbyracq.example.com:1.log

Xvnc TigerVNC 1.8.0 – built Aug 31 2018 12:04:07
Copyright (C) 1999-2017 TigerVNC Team and many others (see README.txt)
See http://www.tigervnc.org for information on TigerVNC.
Underlying X server release 12001000, The X.Org Foundation

Tue Dec 18 16:38:05 2018
vncext: VNC extension running!
vncext: Listening for VNC connections on all interface(s), port 5901
vncext: created VNC server for screen 0
/usr/bin/xterm: cannot load font ‘-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed–13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1’
Killing Xvnc process ID 21100
XIO: fatal IO error 2 (No such file or directory) on X server “:1”
after 90 requests (90 known processed) with 4 events remaining.

Solution:

Check xstartup script:

$ cat /home/oracle/.vnc/xstartup
#!/bin/sh

unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
vncserver -kill $DISPLAY

The line at the end is killing vncserver (which is trange), remove that line:

$ cat /home/oracle/.vnc/xstartup
#!/bin/sh

unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

Start VNC:

$ vncserver -geometry 1024×1024

New ‘stbyracq.example.com:1 (oracle)’ desktop is stbyracq.example.com:1

Starting applications specified in /home/oracle/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/oracle/.vnc/stbyracq.example.com:1.log

Check VNC process:

ps -ef|grep vnc
oracle 22690 1 0 16:40 pts/1 00:00:00 /bin/Xvnc :1 -auth /home/oracle/.Xauthority -desktop stbyracq.example.com:1 (oracle) -fp catalogue:/etc/X11/fontpath.d -geometry 1024×1024 -pn -rfbauth /home/oracle/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5901 -rfbwait 30000
oracle 23106 20841 0 16:41 pts/1 00:00:00 grep –color=auto vnc

Now you can connect to VNC server.