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Running VenueVNCServer
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Overview

VenueVNCServer was officially released in February (see release announcement), adding Windows & MacOSX support to the Linux version which had been informally available for some time. This page describes running VenueVNCServer in a Slackware environment, although the procedure is essentially the same across Linux systems (exact file locations and tool names may vary).

Please consider the security implications of running VenueVNCServer - whoever joins a session has exactly the same privileges on the host machine as the user running VenueVNCServer. Anyone who is in an AG room is able to join a VenueVNC session running in that room.


Downloads

VenueVNCServer as a Slackware package (in the "Extras" section)


Method

The downloaded package should be installed on a machine which has the AG2.3 Toolkit installed. No AG applications _need_ to be running; the toolkit just needs to be there.

Install the package. as root, run:
    installpkg VenueVNCServer-1.14-noarch-1.tgz

Read the newly installed /usr/share/doc/VenueVNCServer-1.14/README file.

Go to the installation directory /usr/share/AccessGrid/applications/VenueVNCServer. From the command line, the most basic invocation from that directory is:
    python VenueVNCServer.py -v https://avenueserver:n000/Venues/averylongstring

where "averylongstring" denotes the room location (as it appears in the VenueClient tool). For instance:

    python VenueVNCServer.py -v https://vv2.ap-accessgrid.org:8000/Venues/default
would put a session in the Lobby of the Asia Pacific Aceess Grid lobby

    python VenueVNCServer.py -v https://vv2.mcs.anl.gov:9000/Venues/000001009b54ba42008c00dd0009000818e
would put a session in the Test Room at the ANL venue server.

Whichever room has been specified with the -v option, will have a VNC session added to its "Application Sessions" node. The session actually begins when someone (you?) joins the session. Anyone can join the session by double clicking on it, or by opening its menu with a single right click and selecting "Open".


Other useful startup options are:
--name (or -n) <session name> e.g.
    python VenueVNCServer.py -v https://vv2.ap-accessgrid.org:8000/Venues/default -n "Test VenueVNC session"

--geometry (or -g) <HxV> e.g.
    python VenueVNCServer.py -v https://vv2.ap-accessgrid.org:8000/Venues/default  -g 600x800