How to start a VNC session correctly on Raspbian?

Question

I start my VNC server via a @reboot vncserver & entry in my user's crontab.

But this seems to cause some problems since the cron environment is restricted. For examples see:

So I would like to know a better way for starting a VNC server for a user under his account.

you can try adding it to your systemd startup, see penguintutor.com/linux/tightvnc — Rohin Gopalakrishnan, Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 16:13
But this seems to run vnc server as root. I want to run the vnc server for two different users under their accounts. — Frank Breitling, Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 16:26
"this seems to run vnc server as root" -> No. Look at line 8 of the startup config file given there and see man systemd.exec. — goldilocks, Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 16:41
Alright. It is a fixed user for a service which needs to be installed by root. So this requires a vnc-user.service for every user. I hope that with the right ownership a user could also restart his vnc.service. I prefer a method which does not involve root (like crontab) more but maybe this provides an alternative solution if cron doesn't work. — Frank Breitling, Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 17:02
This is the same issue as discussed in your other question; probably one of these questions should be made more general and the other deleted. — cjs, Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 17:36

cjs · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-05 17:30:01Z

0

In your crontab, run your login shell with the option that does full login processing and have it run vncserver, e.g.:

bash -l -c vncserver

This will ensure that a) your preferred shell is used, and b) /etc/profile and your .bash_profile or .profile are read.

answered Apr 5, 2017 at 17:30

cjs

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I tried this already, but it doesn't seem to fix issues related to PAM or polkit or whatever the problem is.
– Frank Breitling
Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 17:48

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