FreeNX

The NX protocol aims at offering a stateful desktop session to remote users, like VNC. The most prominent difference is that NX requires less bandwidth. FreeNX is one implementation of the NX protocol.

SUSE 13.1

This is how I installed a FreeNX server on SUSE 13.1x32 on 2014-07-19:

• open a console and enter

# yast -i expect rdesktop
# wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/beyerle:/NX/openSUSE_13.1/i586/NX-3.5.0-123.1.i586.rpm
# wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/beyerle:/NX/openSUSE_13.1/i586/FreeNX-0.7.3-7.1.i586.rpm
# rpm -ivh NX-3.5.0-123.1.i586.rpm FreeNX-0.7.3-7.1.i586.rpm

• read how to set it up

# cat /usr/share/doc/packages/FreeNX/README.SuSE

• set it up

# nxsetup --setup-nomachine-key

Now it should work:

• You call nxclient with your user
• nxclient uses the nx user to connect to the NX server. This authentication works passwordless with a private key (the nomachine-key) in your nxclient and an authorized public key on the nx server. Private and public key must fit to each other.
• nx's shell on the NX server is called nxserver which allows communication over the nx protocol
• now your user name and password is transmitted and checked
• then nxserver establishes the display connection

TroubleShooting

• starting the nxagent, you get

/usr/NX/bin/nxagent: error while loading shared libraries: libXcomp.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Download nxcomp from http://software.opensuse.org/package/libXcomp3 and install it. Copy libXcomp.* to /usr/lib.

• during nxsetup, you get

strings: '/usr/bin/nxagent': No such file
Error: Could not find 1.5.0 or 2.[01].0 version string in nxagent. NX 1.5.0 or 2.[01].0 backend is needed for this version of FreeNX.

copy /usr/NX/bin/nxagent to /usr/bin

• The connection fails during the "Negotiating link parameters" step.

Stop the fireWall on the target computer.

• The connection fails after the "Authentication completed" step.

you get an error message like that:

NX> 1004 Error: NX Agent exited with exit status 1.
Can't open /var/lib/nxserver/db/running/sessionId{CBE6C1DE8281C9A77A5F72F05947EE1F}: No such file or directory.
mv: cannot stat `/var/lib/nxserver/db/running/sessionId{CBE6C1DE8281C9A77A5F72F05947EE1F}': No such file or directory

Possible workaround: re-install the NX server

• You get an error when logging in

Test the connection using ssh, there may be no lines of text sent when logging in. So, e.g. not

hello world
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