Setup FreeNX under Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

Moved …

I’ve moved the details of this post to a seperate page which I’ll keep updated for each version of Ubuntu.

Currently supported versions

  • Intrepid Ibex (8.10)
  • Jaunty Jackalope (9.04)

Thank you for visiting this page.

13 Comments »

Alan Doyle on December 16th 2008 in FreeNX, Howto, Ubuntu

13 Responses to “Setup FreeNX under Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)”

  1. Alex Saavedra responded on 12 May 2009 at 2:52 pm #

    Great tutorial! 
    I recently upgraded a couple of server to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, and required the following modifications to make the FreeNX installation work:

    The following lines appended to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/freenx.ppa.list:

    # Ubuntu FreeNX Repository for Jaunty
    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu jaunty main 
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu jaunty main

    I didn’t change /usr/lib/cups/backend/ipp, probably because my server was not a print server (the file was not found)

    I installed tcl8.5 instead of tcl8.4
    And voilà!
    Alex Saavedra

  2. b - log » FreeNX responded on 03 Mar 2009 at 9:55 am #

    [...] 認証キーとか無視してfreenxをインストール． 　2009/3/3追記． 　Setup FreeNX under Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)を参考に， 　 　 　~$ gpg –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv D018A4CE && gpg [...]

  3. How to use Remote Desktop Connection with Ubuntu « HydTech responded on 15 Feb 2009 at 2:44 am #

    [...] works by starting a new X session when you log in. If you have Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, you can follow this tutorial. Posted by hydtech Filed in [...]

  4. Brendan responded on 06 Feb 2009 at 12:40 pm #

    I have been running FreeNX server on CentOS 5.2 and a Windows XP client for over a year, but did not know about the modem selection optimization. I suppose it is a tradeoff between bandwidth and remote cpu. I’ll give it a try.

    I recommend using the slightly stale 3.1.0-6 NoMachine client, mostly because later versions have a bug (listed as ‘trivial’ on the NoMachines site) when using alt-tab in full screen mode in Windows XP.

    As for the  ‘cannot initialize display device’ error,  I seem to get this message at random even though I  have no cygwin processes running in the background.  A second connection attempt is nearly always successful. 

  5. aflores3 responded on 15 Jan 2009 at 1:33 pm #

    Thats all I wanted to hear.. can’t wait to start playing.

    Thanks again

  6. Alan Doyle responded on 15 Jan 2009 at 8:09 am #

    aflores3 – Because NX is run over SSH it is very secure but you must generate custom keys, as described. The default key shipped with FreeNX is well known, thus insecure, and using it defeats the security provided by using SSH.

    I’ve also specified denyhosts in the list of components to install, this isn’t strictly necessary but does add an additional layer of security but limiting the impact of brute-force attacks on your SSH server.

    Glad to help.

  7. aflores3 responded on 14 Jan 2009 at 5:23 pm #

    thanks for the clear, concise instructions. As an Ubuntu noob, I have to ask: how secure is this? Is it safe to connect to my linux box at home via xp at work? I realize nothing is 100%, but I just wanted to know what you recommend.

    Thanks again.

  8. KnPhuket responded on 14 Jan 2009 at 6:19 am #

    A quick note of thanks.  I had this on my list for a long time but always ran into some hurdle in gutsy and hardy and just did not want to deal with the research to get it going.  OK I was lazy.  This was the kick in the seat I needed.  Simple, clear instructions and the responsiveness improvement over Vinagre is shocking.  Nice job and much appreciate the time you took.

  9. Alan Doyle responded on 10 Jan 2009 at 4:17 pm #

    PhuLeRock – I’ve seen this error on my Windows box when I’ve got an older version of cygwin1.dll already loaded (in my case I was running CopSSH) or if an older version of the dll is in the path. NoMachine have also got these 2 trouble reports ( http://www.nomachine.com/tr/view.php?id=TR01E01593 and http://www.nomachine.com/tr/view.php?id=TR07E01782 ) which may also be the problem. My Windows box is running a UK version of XP (fully patched) with usernames with English-only characters.

    Hope this helps.

  10. PhuLeRock responded on 09 Jan 2009 at 7:06 am #

    I have a problem with NXclient, I have the error “cannot initialize display device ” but I didn’t receive any question about .DLL files ?

    Any help for me ?

  11. karl weibye responded on 06 Jan 2009 at 7:25 pm #

    BIG help, lots of time saved; many thanks.
    Also a terrific remote solution.

  12. Farhan Ahmad responded on 03 Jan 2009 at 4:56 am #

    Alan, thanks a lot for summarizing the setups, saved me a lot of time!

    - Farhan

  13. Dots and Loops » Link roundup for 2008.12.25 responded on 25 Dec 2008 at 10:48 pm #

    [...] Alan Doyle » Setup FreeNX under Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) This thing is so fast I’m speechless. After fiddling with XRDP and VNC, I’ve decided this is the definitive remote desktop solution for Linux. And it all happens over ssh automagically. No tunneling required, like with VNC. [...]