[rav]

Hi there!

After some IT-excavations in my garage and basement I've found some O2's, Indy's, Octane's and even Onyx 2 and IRIS Indigo ...
I'm looking for a way to connect to X11 environment via X11 / VNC from OSX machine(s)
Possible ?

I found even a x11vnc server but I've got constant issue with:
IRIX01 12#  /usr/tgcware/bin/x11vnc     
1876:/usr/tgcware/bin/x11vnc: rld: Fatal Error: Cannot Successfully map soname 'libssl.so.0.9.8' under any of the filenames /usr/tgcware/lib/libssl.so.0.9.8:/usr/lib32/libssl.so.0.9.8:/usr/lib32/internal/libssl.so.0.9.8:/lib32/libssl.so.0.9.8:/opt/lib32/libssl.so.0.9.8:

even did make soft-links to the proper locations ...

Any clue ?

THA

Cheers

Rav

[jpstewart]

Do you have the SSL package from tgcware installed?  Another SSL library probably won't work.

It is complaining about the "soname" (the library's internal name) rather than a file name, so it is possible to have the right library filename on disk but without the proper internal soname.

[sunray]

Why are you not using X11 on the Macs?

[Raion]

Because Xquartz is a buggy mess perhaps? Doesn't have a particularly good reputation and hasn't for a long time.

[Raion]

So as for the issue at hand here, this is a tgcware issue. It's not getting it's symbols satisfied. Simply put, this probably requires a recompile as any attempt to fix this for vnc will break it for others.

[sunray]

Because Xquartz is a buggy mess perhaps? Doesn't have a particularly good reputation and hasn't for a long time.

Is it really so,  I do run it pretty often and have not had any issues with it!

I find it very very hard to belive that VNC is better, VNC is really crappy compared to X11

[Raion]

The protocols are entirely uncomparable.

X11 basically sends bitmap frames over the network and it has no security or authentication to it, hence X forwarding for ssh.

VNC uses JPEG, which is much more efficient, and changes only the pixels between them. RDP, afaik, does it too?

The issue with macOS and X is that in Leopard and before it was an optional base component. This meant it had to be continuously tested for interop and integration.

However for Xquartz, it uses:

Nonstandard paths, which tends to confuse autoconf requiring patches for macOS builds.

It has long had glitches for XDMCP and remote X that broke large numbers of installations.

Interoperability problems, because Apple deleted it.

Again, Apple doesn't really care since they're anti-power user. The majority of their userbase doesn't even know what x11 is.

VNC is an annoying protocol to use, but then again so is pretty much everything of this variety.

[Shiunbird]

XQuartz works for very basic use cases.
Get out of the beaten path and it falls apart very quickly.

Apple cared about it when they tried to pretend they cared about UNIX. They even got certified at some point, I think.
Also, I don't know, X seems to be on the way out as well... I haven't been following the tale.

And yes, on top of what Raion said, I once tried X11 over SSH via VPN and... it takes a good few seconds for even a drop down menu to finish drawing. It saturated my upstream bandwidth at the time. For LAN it's ok.

[weblacky]

I was really hoping that some of these homebrew IP KVM solutions would finally take sync on green VGA interfaces so that we could just use IP KVM on the SGI’s and not have to use any software solution.

But I haven’t seen anyone take the journey to actually allow SOG VGA instead of HDMI on a lot of these new single station IP KVM projects popping up.

And I certainly don’t know enough myself to do anything about it.

For now the only thing I know is some of the older Raritan KVM Products did have sync on green endpoints.

[jwhat]

NHi Rav & Co,

I am able to simply and without any issues connect to SGI X11 on MacOS via XQuartz (X Windows) & to Ubuntu VNC via built in VNC client.

XQuartz has recently been updated to support Big Sur (release 2.8.1) and is maintained by Jeremy Hu via GitHub (I am sure he would be happy for others to pitch in and help with supporting this to fix bugs and keep current).

Once installed on your Mac you can connect to SGI machine using XDMCP: X -query <IP.MACHINE>

For connecting to machine via VNC simply go to Finder menu:
- "Go -> Connect to Server ..." and it will pop up a dialog
- then enter: "vnc://<MACHINE.IP"

With current Ubuntu releases (from 17.04 I think, and other Gnone Desktop Linux's are likely the same) Ubuntu uses the "wayland" protocol and so you cannot natively connect remotely. Rather it has to run VNC server on top of this and I found you need to disable "wayland" and use gdm3 windows manager or alternate. I have documented the details of configuring this in my blog, as this is fiddly and tends to break with Ubuntu upgrades so it is useful to know what is going on.

I am not sure if there is a VNC server available for IRIX, others could comment on this.

Cheers from Oz,


jwhat/John.