VNC - can non-root users start a session?

[David O'Keefe]

We've been using vnc for years - but always with the root user starting the session.

Our DBAs are now showing interest and I would like them to be able to start their own sessions under their own userids.

Whenever I try it as a non-root user...

nohup /opt/vnc/vncserver

I get the following message in the ~/.vnc/.log file....

_XSERVTransSocketUNIXCreateListener: ...SocketCreateListener() failed
_XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: server already running

Fatal server error:
Cannot establish any listening sockets - Make sure an X server isn't already running

I've googled the above messages to no avail..

Can anyone help?

hp-ux 11iv1 on pa-risc

[Mark Förster]

Hi David,

I often had this error when the display id was used in the past but a "vncserver -kill" wasn't done correctly. Maybe some port is still occupied. Try higher display numbers until you get one which hasn't been used since the last reboot. I successfully started vnc sessions on HP-UX as a non-root user with high display numbers like e.g.:
vncserver :9

Regards,

Mark