HOWTO: Install FreeNX

[botcolon]

I agree with Brickbat....

[darrenm]

Spent most of today scratching my head about this and getting confused and picking loads of bits of information up from here and there. I now have nx working and I'm extremely impressed with the performance so far.

I thought I would detail some of my ways of getting it working in case its any use to anyone else.

My setup:
server: Ubuntu dapper with latest updates
client: Ubuntu dapper with latest updates
Both running Gnome on X 7.0, SSH already setup so I can login with DSA keys

Firstly on the server
As most people know the repositories have changed since the howto so do:

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.lst

and add
deb http://free.linux.hp.com/~brett/seveas/freenx/ dapper-seveas freenx
to the end
update the database:

sudo apt-get update

then install freenx

sudo apt-get install freenx

and choose nomachine keys in the setup.

Next, as SSH will have the authorized_keys file set as default and you don't really want to change from that copy the file authorized_keys2 that freenx installs to the location sshd is expecting to see:

su -
cd /var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh
cp authorized_keys2 authorized_keys

then tidy up the ownership

chown nx authorized_keys

I had to add a user to freenx before it let my client connect in so add a user:

nxserver --adduser yourusername
nxserver --passwd yourusername

and fill in the password you want. The user name you choose needs to already be setup on the server as a valid login.

Now it will have added a key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 which again is not where sshd will expect to find the keys so add the key to the end of your normal authorized_keys file:

exit

(to drop from root if you are still in)

cd ~yourusername/.ssh
cat authorized_keys2

drag the mouse over the whole key starting from ssh-dss ending with the last character then:

vi authorized_keys

press o to open a new line, press the middle mouse button to paste the previous selection, then press escape and type :wq and press enter.

Now the client

Again add the saveas repository to apt:

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.lst

and add
deb http://free.linux.hp.com/~brett/seveas/freenx/ dapper-seveas freenx
to the end
update the database:

sudo apt-get update

then install nxclient

sudo apt-get install nxclient

Then either add the nx bin directory to your path adding /usr/NX/bin to your path in ~/.bash_profile or just type /usr/NX/bin/nxclient to run it. Strangely if you uninstall and reinstall nxclient without deleting your ~/.nx folder it will put it into the gnome Applications menu under internet...

Set up the client as you would expect, using the username and password you setup on the server and perhaps dropping the res to 800x600 for an ADSL connection for speed.

Hope I've not forgotten anything, I'm sure others have better ways to do it, this was just my way of getting it working.
Darren

[Predseda3D]

I have a couple of questions.

I am constantly getting an error when I try to connect. The Authentication goes through fine and then it times out.

The error mentions an unrecognised "1" and it says it is unable to start the server but when I log onto machine and check it, the server is running.

The version I installed from the repo that the howto is referring to is 1.4 and my client is a Windows version 2.0.

Could that be the problem? I checked on the website and there is a freenx server version 2 deb package.

Could it be that the server is not recognising one of the parameters and so not starting up the session?

Has anyone tried installing the deb from the freenx website?

Hi,

I have Debian Etch and have installed this:
freenx 0.5.0-2
nxagent 1.4.92+1.5.0-11
libxcomp1 1.4.92+1.5.0-11
libxcompext1 1.4.92+1.5.0-11
nxlibs 1.4.92+1.5.0-11

from deb http://debian.tu-bs.de/project/kanotix/unstable/ sid nx

And everything work great for me. I tested this with NX Client 2.0.0-98 and NX Client 1.5.0-138.
I tested it with FreeNX 0.4.4+0.4.5-4 and work good too.

If i use NX Client 2.0.0 i must use some hack in nxnode to work for me.

If somebody have problem with NX Clients versions 2.0.0 and FreeNX 0.4.x or 0.5.0, you can read wiki about this problem and solution here:
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en...roblem_Solving
or here:
http://wiki.debian.org/freenx
or here:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Talk:HOWTO_Fr....4.x_and_0.5.0

1.4.0 is old backend, try upgrade to 1.5.0 .
Newest freenx is version 0.5.0.

Hope that will help.

Predseda

[darrenm]

Hi,

I have Debian Etch and have installed this:
freenx 0.5.0-2
nxagent 1.4.92+1.5.0-11
libxcomp1 1.4.92+1.5.0-11
libxcompext1 1.4.92+1.5.0-11
nxlibs 1.4.92+1.5.0-11

from deb http://debian.tu-bs.de/project/kanotix/unstable/ sid nx

And everything work great for me. I tested this with NX Client 2.0.0-98 and NX Client 1.5.0-138.
I tested it with FreeNX 0.4.4+0.4.5-4 and work good too.

If i use NX Client 2.0.0 i must use some hack in nxnode to work for me.

If somebody have problem with NX Clients versions 2.0.0 and FreeNX 0.4.x or 0.5.0, you can read wiki about this problem and solution here:
http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en...roblem_Solving
or here:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Talk:HOWTO_Fr....4.x_and_0.5.0

1.4.0 is old backend, try upgrade to 1.5.0 .
Newest freenx is version 0.5.0.

Hope that will help.

Predseda

I tried the 2.0 nxclient from nomachine and got the 1 error. Looks like they are just incompatible. Using the nxclient 1.5 from seveas works fine.

[Predseda3D]

I tried the 2.0 nxclient from nomachine and got the 1 error. Looks like they are just incompatible. Using the nxclient 1.5 from seveas works fine.

Did you apply hacks in nxnode as is described in wiki from my previous post ?

Without those hacks i cannot use client version 2.0.0 too.
But with those hacks applying, it's working great.

Pred

[darrenm]

Sorry, didnt read it :O

I find the 1.5 client fine, is there a reason to use 2.0?

[Predseda3D]

Sorry, didnt read it :O

I find the 1.5 client fine, is there a reason to use 2.0?

First reason is, that it's hard to find old version of client.
Second reason is, that i have problem with old client with resumed sessions, sometimes it don't work for me (2-3 times for week). With 2.0.0 version i don't have this issue for 2 weeks.

Predseda

[mpx]

I'm trying to connect from winxp to Ubuntu dapper. The client version is 2.0.0-98. This is turning out to be harder than I thought. I've followed all the steps mentioned.
When I try to connect, the client login dialog displays
"established xserver connection" and the dialog window disappears. Nothing is displayed. I do see nxwin.exe and nxssh.exe running in the taskmanager.

The nxserver.log shows this:

NX> 1000 NXNODE - Version 1.4.0-45-SVN OS (GPL)
NX> 700 Session id: mpoolu5-1006-04646C2CD085AB32051B2856C5C43DE8
NX> 705 Session display: 1006
NX> 703 Session type: unix-kde
NX> 701 Proxy cookie: 62ff736fb7d068742afd02b4ff0ca9c5
NX> 702 Proxy IP: 10.10.59.75
NX> 706 Agent cookie: 84811fed582a9c7b8cb41f68f0ed6147
NX> 704 Session cache: unix-kde
NX> 707 SSL tunneling: 0
NX> 710 Session status: running
NX> 1002 Commit
NX> 1006 Session status: running
NX> 105 bye
Bye
NX> 999 Bye
NX> 1001 Bye.
NX> 105
---------

Please help.

[mpx]

bump.. Anyone any ideas? Please help.

[arosboro]

When I heard about NXServer I was trying to figure out why kde's krfb is using such an outdated vnc protocol (making it impossibly slow). NXServer sounded like (and is) the perfect replacement. The only problem is, all the info google brings up makes it seem like a Ubuntu user would need to mess with repositiories and install FreeNX. FreeNX is outdated and probably obsolete because nomachine.com offers a desktop server for free now that allows 2 users to connect to any machine.

jkbrowne figured it out. Here's his original post, which is very easy to follow: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...37&postcount=2

Hopefully the ubuntu devs might add these 3 packages to the official repository.

Enjoy!

Andrew