Some further sys-gui-vnc diagnostics:
I also tried using @ddevz forum post #6687 suggestion to enable the custom service “guivm-vnc” on sys-gui-vnc.
qvm-shutdown sys-gui-vnc --wait
qvm-service --enable sys-gui-vnc guivm-vnc on
qvm-start sys-gui-vnc
Confirmed sys-gui-vnc services on:
qvm-service --list sys-gui-vnc
lightdm on
guivm on
guivm-gui-vnc on
dummy-psu on
guivm-vnc on
Looking into sys-gui-vnc file at /usr/bin/qubes-run-x11vnc shows a mention of “guivm-vnc”:
qvm-run --auto --nogui --pass-io sys-gui-vnc 'cat /usr/bin/qubes-run-x11vnc' | grep guivm-vnc
if qsvc guivm-vnc; then
so maybe this missing “guivm-vnc” is still needed and/or is a bug in 4.2?
But enabling “guivm-vnc” service in sys-gui-vnc still did not work. Same VNC app closed connection drop issue still.
I tried seeing if any VNC server process was running in sys-gui-vnc, like this:
qvm-start --auto --nogui --pass-io sys-gui-vnc 'ps aux | grep -v grep | grep vnc'
but no processes mentioning “vnc” were showing in an already running sys-gui-vnc.
I also tried seeing if any VNC server is running on sys-gui-vnc from startup in a loop of 100 iterations, like this:
qvm-shutdown sys-gui-vnc --wait
for i in {1..100}; do date && qvm-start --auto --nogui --pass-io sys-gui-vnc 'ps aux | grep -v grep | grep vnc'; done
and then several various “x11vnc” processes showed up, slightly changing across ps aux loop iterations, then going away to no “vnc” processes of any kind showing at all after about 10 to 15 seconds.
I then re-tried that startup loop test, but tried connecting to VNC from a sys-remote VNC app, several times shortly during/after startup of sys-gui-vnc, and it had a visible effect. The effect this had was that the ps aux loop showed “x11vnc” live processes for about as long as I kept retrying to connect from the sys-remote VNC app, up to about 2 minutes tested, compared to the standard 10 to 15 seconds where any live “x11vnc” processes seem to die out.
Once all “x11vnc” processes die out after sys-gui-vnc startup, any further attempts to connect from the sys-remote VNC app do not seem to bring any “vnc” processes back to life in the sys-gui-vnc qube.
So it seems like the x11vnc server is “being pinged” somehow by the VNC application connect attempts, but is maybe not being initialized or running properly in the fedora-38-xfce based sys-gui-vnc qube?