my GKrellMs are now running within a VNC server on a VM

My GKrellMs are really nice graphical utilities. They even remember their positions for their next start, if you tell them to do that. But if you have like 5 of them, it’s still a hassle to get them all started – even if you have a script to achieve that task. It’s nicer, if you can simply “dive” into some environment, where they are already available for you. VNC is the basis for that kind of thing. The VNC server is a “virtual” X Window Server – “but” it’s really there and running and available at your demand – and you would attach to it through a VNC viewer.

I like this set-up a lot.

VNC vs screen saver AKA screen locker

I only look at my GKrellMs once in a while – there is no need to touch that environment, so of course that looks like a kind of inactivity, and that asks for a screen saver operation. And yes, even my VNC environment had a “screen saver” AKA “screen locker” running initially.

This is the KDE desktop’s section, where you configure that:

  • Hardware / Display and Monitor / Screen Locker

Now the screen saver does not start any longer after a period of inactivity within my VNC environment.

VNC viewer within a web browser

Isn’t there a “VNC viewer within a web browser“, that makes a separate VNC viewer application (by itself) redundant? Yes, there is.

My VNC server has its log file at $HOME/.vnc/*:*.log. There is a line saying “Listening for HTTP connections on all interface(s), port …” – take that port and connect to it in your web browser! Now you only need to be able to run that Java plug-in within your browser.

Activity of non-visible applications – power consumption

You would wish, that non-visible applications don’t really do anything. I would wish, that my non-visible GKrellM front ends do not pull data from their back ends. I am in fact a little pessimistic, they really do behave like that.

GKrellM + VNC = poor man’s monitoring

Isn’t that really, what my GKrellMs being displayed in a VNC environment are?


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