Hanne's blog

After upgrading to Oneiric, I panicked as freenx-server was no longer available for install. Googling around a bit and finding this blog was a god-send!

With the following adjustments, I was able to get neatx working on Lubuntu 11.10 64-bit:

1. also need to apt-get install zlib1g-dev libgd2-xpm-dev as Lubuntu is really stripped down and missing some essential headers
2. sprinkle sudo here and there, as needed
3. LD_LIBRARY_PATH also needs /usr/local/src/NX/nxcompshad
4. sudo mv the NX directory to /usr/local/src/NX as make install didn't seem to install to the system directories
5. cp nxagent to /usr/bin/nxagent

HINTS: the nx build takes a long time - be patient but check on the output to make sure there are no headers missing. when starting the nx client, tail -f /var/log/syslog to see what's going on

gl

Does NoMachine client support key-based login ? The key configured in FreeNX is to switch to nx user on remote host only ?

it seems to be an error in the line:
apt-get install python-pexpect python-simplejson python-gtk2 python-docutils python-gobject python openssh make automake autoconf gcc xauth xrdb netcat

should be:
aptitude install python-pexpect python-simplejson python-gtk2 python-docutils python-gobject python openssh-server make automake autoconf gcc xauth netcat x11-xserver-utils

(compatible with squeeze)

Thanks a lot.
I resolved this problem in my suse enterprise Server 11.

I changed /etc/X11/xorg.conf

That wont do much good, will it? Buying spare UPSs which will stand on the shelve unloaded. They wouldn't work when I needed them, would they?

I do not at this point of my understanding of UPS's see any point of buying more UPSs than I can load. You are welcome to explain to my why you think that should be a solution.

After the fact, the rather rude APC support guy rather accidentially did give me the hint I had been looking for. It should be possible, with the redundant power supplies in the servers, to put one on net power and the other one on the UPS and failover when the UPS runs dry. So the servers can be used as load.

When I wrote this post, I was hoping someone would tell me what other people do. My conclusion now is that most "small UPS owners" never the test and just buys a new battery when they have to. And that if you cannot afford one of the big solutions, you are basically screwed, backups or not.

You've just explain the proverbial catch 22. Just like many things if you don't use it you loose so it is not good for the UPS to stand by with little or no load. Buy some backups :(

Hello Scott

I don't remember having a problem locating the file, so I guess I found it in /etc/X11 or something similar. I don't have access to a SuSE box now. If there are several xorg.conf files, perhaps you can make a change via the GUI config tool and see which file changed?

If there is no xorg.conf in /etc/X11 try "locate xorg.conf" or if that doesn't work, the graphical file manager probably has a search function.

I hacve exactly this problem.

How do I find the right copy of xorg.conf to edit?

In case this helps anyone on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

How to Install neatx instead of Nomachine NX

Set up PPA using instructions at https://launchpad.net/~freenx-team/+archive/ppa

The instructions below are based on http://code.google.com/p/neatx/source/browse/trunk/neatx/INSTALL

First uninstall NX Nomachine then install dependencies and nxagent

sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --stop
sudo dpkg -r nxserver
sudo dpkg -r nxnode
sudo dpkg -r nxclient
sudo rm -rf /usr/NX

sudo apt-get install make openssh-server python python-pexpect \
python-simplejson python-gtk2 python-gobject gcc autoconf automake \
python-docutils netcat xauth x11-xserver-utils

sudo apt-get install nxagent

Now install neatx (note, I am installing in a non-standard directory):

cd /software/neatx
svn checkout http://neatx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ neatx-read-only
mkdir neatx
cd neatx-read-only/neatx
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/software/neatx/ --exec-prefix=/software/neatx/
make
make install

Now, do the configuration (creating an nx user etc, config files etc)

sudo useradd --system -m -d /software/neatx/var/lib/neatx/home -s /software/neatx/lib/neatx/nxserver-login-wrapper nx
sudo install -D -m 600 -o nx /software/neatx/share/neatx/authorized_keys.nomachine ~nx/.ssh/authorized_keys
mkdir /software/neatx/etc
cp /software/neatx-read-only/neatx/doc/neatx.conf.example /software/neatx/etc/neatx.conf

uncomment all commented config lines in /software/neatx/etc/neatx.conf

I found that old nxclients didn't work - so it seemed easier to reinstall those (after deleting $HOME/.nx on the client machine) and then everything worked.

Hi.

Well after 2 days of banging my head against a wall. Anyone got any clue what so ever why I get this?

Mar 8 01:08:56 apidfm01 nxserver-login[21792]: INFO nxserver_login:253 Trying login for user 'danieli' using auth method 'su'

Mar 8 01:08:56 apidfm01 nxserver[21803]: INFO nxserver:689 Starting nxserver for user danieli

Mar 8 01:08:57 apidfm01 nxserver[21803]: INFO nxserver:377 Starting new session '69A657F0BA58A689C9BB89080606B0EB'

Mar 8 01:08:57 apidfm01 nxserver[21803]: INFO node:514 Connecting to '/usr/local/var/lib/neatx/sessions/69A657F0BA58A689C9BB89080606B0EB/nxnode.sock'

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO nxnode:266 Connection established

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO nxnode:81 Received request: 'start', {'imagecompressionlevel': '-1', 'render': '1', 'strict': '0', 'composite': '1', 'encryption': '1', 'cache': '16M', 'backingstore': '1', 'geometry': '1274x738', 'screeninfo': '1274x738x32+render', 'session': 'DFM', 'link': 'adsl', 'shmem': '1', 'media': '0', 'images': '64M', 'keyboard': 'pc102/gb', 'type': 'unix-kde', 'shpix': '1', 'imagecompressionmethod': '3', 'client': 'winnt'}

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO node:290 Starting xauth for [(':965', 'C8F26B0D0047C6BE93435D72B9A39112'), ('localhost:965', 'C8F26B0D0047C6BE93435D72B9A39112')]

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO daemon:491 Starting program, executable=None, args=['/usr/bin/xauth', '-f', '/usr/local/var/lib/neatx/sessions/69A657F0BA58A689C9BB89080606B0EB/authority']

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO daemon:519 Child /usr/bin/xauth[21814] started

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxserver[21803]: INFO nxserver:594 Waiting for session '69A657F0BA58A689C9BB89080606B0EB' to achieve waiting status

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO node:325 Starting nxagent

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO daemon:491 Starting program, executable=None, args=['/usr/X11R6/bin/nxagent', '-D', '-name', 'Neatx - danieli@apidfm01:965 - DFM', '-options', '/usr/local/var/lib/neatx/sessions/69A657F0BA58A689C9BB89080606B0EB/options', '-nolisten', 'tcp', ':965']

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO daemon:519 Child /usr/X11R6/bin/nxagent[21815] started

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO agent:346 Matched info agent_pid, PID 21815

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO agent:409 Nxagent changed status from 'created' to 'starting'

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: ERROR agent:376 Agent error: Aborting session with 'Unable to open display 'nx/nx,options=/usr/local/var/lib/neatx/sessions/69A657F0BA58A689C9BB89080606B0EB/options:965''.

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO agent:409 Nxagent changed status from 'starting' to 'terminating'

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO agent:409 Nxagent changed status from 'terminating' to 'terminated'

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO agent:457 Nxagent terminated

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: ERROR daemon:583 /usr/X11R6/bin/nxagent[21815] failed (status=1, signal=None)

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxnode[21811]: INFO node:345 nxagent terminated

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxserver[21803]: ERROR nxserver:586 Session '69A657F0BA58A689C9BB89080606B0EB' has status 'terminated'

Mar 8 01:08:58 apidfm01 nxserver-login[21792]: INFO auth:142 Waiting for authenticated program to finish

Mar 8 01:09:43 apidfm01 SQLAnywhere(monitordb): Starting checkpoint of "monitordb" (monitordb.db) at Mon Mar 08 2010 01:09

Mar 8 01:09:50 apidfm01 SQLAnywhere(monitordb): Finished checkpoint of "monitordb" (monitordb.db) at Mon Mar 08 2010 01:09

It will not work. I have completed every task in the install guides. I have built nxagent it seems to run. I just never get a session. SSH works .. everything works. If I wipe this lot out and use the NX Free forever stuff instead that works .. I just need more than 2 sessions.

FreeNX and all derivatives of it seem to suffer from the same utter lack of any useable docs. Poor error reporting and nothing in the way of support.

Not good ...

--Ian

Well I'm having some problems with the neatx server myself. It is fast, it works fine when it works - and it leaves dead sessions behind. It does not have a tool to kill these sessions like nxserver --list, nxserver --kill in freenx, so I end up killing processes and deleting directories manually, never being completely sure which sessions are dead and which are alive.

I think the problem arises when people try to be good and log out of KDE or GNOME from the K / Gnome menu, whereas if they click the x in the corner, they get to choose "Terminate", which terminates the session, or "Disconnect" which gives them a session they can restore.

Disconnect works. (And reconnecting).

Terminate does not delete the session directory, but it does kill the process, and the leftover directory is not a big problem.

Logging out from the GUI via the menu leaves the neatx related processes running. One can easily avoid making this mistake oneself, but it is difficult to prevent the students from doing it.

I don't have a solution to this problem, but I can imagine that one could perhaps modify either some neatx terminate script or some KDE and GNOME script on the machine to send some termination message to neatx. If one could bother to find out exactly which scripts are called in which order. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for the tutorial; I finally have NX working now.

It's fast (I'm in the U.S., typing this up via NX to a UK machine), and works great.

I did have to futz around with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH a bit.

This greatly assisted me too. Your tip about checking SSH access with the hostkey is what cleared things up for me.

wow, that really helped me out.

as there isn't very much documentation on the neatx project, your post greatly helped.

neatnx runs fine... and seems to be lot easier to set up than my already running freenx.

thx
garfield

I have struggled with this for hours and with 1 letter change thanks to your blog - its fixed.

I love Google and People who make the effort to assist others!

Mmm that sometimes works, for up to 20 minutes at a time :-)

You're looking at this the wrong way - when the hubby goes in the basement to "work", you send the kids out to play with friends and put the cat in the garden.

Why settle for a room, when you can have the entire house to yourself ;-)

Hi,

I bought the M610i unit for about half year ago and got exactly the same problem as you described with devices going read-only.

I've always believed that my harddrives where the problem because I used a bunch if harddrives from the shelf which unfortunately wasn't listed as officially supported.

I'll try your well written "guide" for upgrading it. Hopefully it solves the problem for me aswell.

Thanks for really good instructions.

Hello Ken

No, upgrading the firmware solved the problem, see upgrading-firmware-on-promise-vtrak-m610 . It has been running fine since.

I cannot say whether it is reliable enough for your purpose. We use it as spare storage for some of our research groups, so it is not in heavy use. I wouldn't use it for main storage, being only iSCSI and with no on site support (at least here in Denmark), but since this is my first iSCSI device I may be too cautious.

I don't know how sensitive a Windows VM is to being crashed unexpectedly. If it is very important stuff you will be running I think I should pay more for the storage or buy something I knew in advance.

Hello,

Are you still having this problem with your m610i?

I'm considering buying one of these, but I wanted to get some feedback on the reliability before I do. I need something reliable enough to run some Windows server VMs on.

I'm experiencing the same issue:

Dell PowerEdge 2650
Dell PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller 3/Di

Thanks for the links!

Hi from France...
Just to say that i just receive the same bad mail from your new "best friend" Carine, for an order of 400 Euros :-(
At first i thought that it was some new phishing stuff, then i found your post on this issue (and your blog by the way, which is the good part of that experience).
As french, and old customer of Agnes B but for the first time online (it is new year sales now in Paris, so to many people to fight with) i am of course selfish and i hate to be treated like this. So i am working on a letter (paper, stone age, you know) to Agnes B herself to let her know how her online sales department take care of customers.
I will send you any answer.
Yes, i am sure to get one, i'm french ;-)

JM