Mac VNC Client for Linux KVM


Published on March 30th, 2008
3 Comments

kvm-annoying.pngWhen you build a KVM guest, if you want to install the guest over the network, you should attach the video console of your guest to a VNC display.

How can I put this..? This is quite a novel way of doing it.  I think there’s a reason that more virtualisation systems don’t work in this way.  VNC is not great, but I am sure there is a reason that I can’t use a dummy serial port instead.  I’d have preferred RDP, but perhaps there’s a reason I can’t use that too.

I normally use Chicken of the VNC as a mac osx client, because it has a funny name, and has always worked.  However, it crashes and burns (see screen shot) when trying to install Debian on a KVM guest.  Hopefully I can save someone else an evenings’s worth of trying every other mac vnc client, and offer the fix.  Just use VNCViewer.  I tried this after half a dozen others which all failed in a similar way to Chicken.

Any comments on why RDP or Serial might not have been better welcome.


3 Comments

Comments

3 Responses to “Mac VNC Client for Linux KVM”

  1. craiga Says:

    The main reason you couldn’t use RDP is because it’s an MS protocol. There is only one non-MS implementation in the wild (xrdp), and that only works with X.org via Xvnc anyway.

  2. craiga Says:

    Also, VNC was probably chosen for openness and ubiquity. Most devices have a VNC viewer these days. Using an open protocol rather than writing a custom UI seems like a fairly sensible shortcut. The problem only comes to light because all Mac VNC software sucks as, it seems, you have discovered!

  3. jkp Says:

    You saved one man a night tearing his hair out / trying every client for a night! Thanks dude…

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