Gnome session crashes only when being launched through systemd service?

[dereksmilees]

I have been googling and googling and am at the end of my rope here looking for some sort of explanation.



I've been trying to follow this guide and this guide to get vnc running as a system service using the gnome desktop on Ubuntu 18.04. I've been struggling, and am honestly quite surprised how hard this has been.

I've got the initial vnc server running - if I run "vncserver :1 -localhost no -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 32", for example, it does spin up a vnc server. I can connect to it, it displays things, no problem. Here is my xstartup file. My issue is with the systemd unit file and getting it to work as a system service.



Hereis my current "/etc/systemd/system/vncserver@.service" file. The vnc log file (~/.vnc/testvm01.domain.local\:1.log) shows no errors. "Systemctl status vncserver@1.service" even shows the vnc server as active (running), and I am able to connect to it, but I only get a black screen.



The following is the error from my systemctl status page:



Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session[3901]: gnome-session-binary[3901]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session-binary[3901]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[3977]: Window manager warning: Unsupported session type
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session[3901]: gnome-session-binary[3901]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session-binary[3901]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session[3901]: gnome-session-binary[3901]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session-binary[3901]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session-binary[3901]: Unrecoverable failure in required component org.gnome.Shell.desktop
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session[3901]: gnome-session-binary[3901]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....
Sep 17 23:32:55 testvm03 gnome-session-binary[3901]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....

Why does this happen only when the vnc is launched through the service, and not when launched through the normal command line method? And how can I stop gnome from crashing?




Thanks for the help! I've posted on reddit, googled, I've been struggling with this for a few days now.

[iuridiniz]

I've exactly the same problem, it does not work if I starting by using systemd (only gnome3 has this failure, lxde and fluxbox works fine with systemd). If I start manually gnome3 works.

[iuridiniz]

It's seems a issue with systemd, if I use a beta version (1.9.80) or a old version (1.8.0), the server start but I get a black screen. There's a issue for this on github: https://github.com/TigerVNC/tigervnc/issues/684

[iuridiniz]

Well, I give up this method, so I'm using lightdm, it just works
I've followed this guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LightDM#VNC_Server
This is my config:

# /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

[LightDM]
start-default-seat=false

[VNCServer]
enabled=true
command=Xvnc -rfbauth /etc/vncpasswd
port=5900
listen-address=0.0.0.0
width=2560
height=1080