Nx

From Linuxintro

NX allows you to set up a terminal server. You will be working in front of a computer (the client) that is connected via netWork to another computer (the server) that does the actual work. Your client will only forward the server's display. NX is faster than vNc.

Install NX as display manager

Maybe you have a very old computer and want to make it a thin client to a faster one (the faster one acting as terminal server). Then you want the old computer to display the NX client program right after startup, without a user having to log in. So you want Nx to be your display manager. Here are some changes I did to /etc/init.d/xdm to make this happen:

case "$1" in
    start)
        X &
        export DISPLAY=:0
        /usr/NX/bin/nxclient
        while true; do sleep 9; done

Tweaking NX

Almost everything is very fast and low-latency with NX. However, Window resizing effects are slow. Switch them off, e.g. in KDE using kpersonalizer:

kpersonalizer -> chose Next till you come to the Eyecandy-O-Meter -> Show details -> Window Moving/Resizing Effects

KDE 4

In order to run KDE 4 in an NX session, you may need to change the call startkde to startkde4 in /usr/NX/etc/node.cfg and /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxnode. This is the case if your KDE is started with the command startkde4.

TroubleShooting

To get logging output to /var/log/messages, edit /usr/NX/etc/node.cfg. Set

SessionLogLevel = "6"

and you can read NX' log from /var/log/messages. Let's look at this one:

Jan  8 17:07:18 mars NXNODE-3.2.0-11[30374]: ERROR: run command: process: 30461 died because of signal: 9 Logger::log nxnode 3844
Jan  8 17:07:18 mars NXNODE-3.2.0-11[30480]: Directory '/home/tstaerk/.nx/C-mars-1019-7C3118AB902BD0DFE9CEC4AC7631B407' renamed into '/home/user/.nx/F-C-mars-1019-7C3118AB902BD0DFE9CEC4AC7631B407' for further investigation Logger::log nxnode 6215

Now you cd to /home/user/.nx/F-C-mars-1019-7C3118AB902BD0DFE9CEC4AC7631B407 and look at the log files.

Connecting to ...

When I had this error that NX showed nothing but connecting to... it helped to kill nxd.

The NX service is not available

Symptom
When logging in you get the error message
The NX service is not available or the NX access was disabled on host hostname

When clicking onto "Detail" you get

NX> 200 Connected to address: 10.20.68.47 on port: 22
NX> 202 Authenticating user: nx
NX> 208 Using auth method: publickey
NX> 204 Authentication failed.

For every log in attempt you find the following message in /var/log/messages:

2013-11-27T08:55:47.608389+01:00 ls3523 sshd[19975]: Connection closed by 10.20.68.47 [preauth]

There is no file /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys, only a file /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys2

Solution
Copy the file authorized_keys2 to authorized_keys:
tweedleburg:/usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh # cp authorized_keys2 authorized_keys
tweedleburg:/usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh # chown nx authorized_keys

and it works

wrong colors

Sometimes you see wrong colors in your NxClient like this: Snapshot-wrong-colors.png In this case, disable compression.

Connected to ...

Symptom: Your attempt to connect to NX fails after nxclient output "Connected to computername". You get the error message

The NX service is not available or the NX access was disabled on host computername

When you click on "Detail" you get something like

NX> 203 NXSSH running with pid: 7266
NX> 285 Enabling check on switch command
NX> 285 Enabling skip of SSH config files
NX> 285 Setting the preferred NX options
NX> 200 Connected to address: 192.168.178.3 on port: 22
NX> 202 Authenticating user: nx
NX> 208 Using auth method: publickey
NX> 204 Authentication failed.

Solution, in this case for SUSE Linux 12.2 and NX 3.5:

ln -s /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys2 /usr/NX/home/nx/.ssh/authorized_keys

Downloading the session information

Symptom: Your NX connection fails after the message "Downloading session information". When you set SessionLogLevel to 7 in /usr/NX/etc/node.cfg and try again you find in /var/log/messages something like

NX> 596 /usr/bin/xauth: /home/user/.nx/C-hostname-1007-E856077CEA415BD723D2013A45400AC9/scripts/authority:3:  
bad display name "hostname:1007" in "add" command

Reason 1: NX expects to be able to connect to the localhost by using its hostname.

Solution: Make sure you can ping your local host like this:

ping $(hostname)

Reason 2: You do not have enough disk space left.

Solution: Free up some disk space.

Established display connection

Symptom: Your NX connection fails after the message "Established display connection". The log file on the server under /home/user/.nx/latest/session contains a string

Error: Aborting session with 'Could not open default font 'fixed''.

Solution 1: It may be the X Font Server. Start it

/etc/init.d/xfs start

Solution 2: Copy over the folder /usr/share/fonts/misc from your client to the server.

Server configuration error

You get

Server configuration error. Cannot log in.
Please contact your system administrator.

Solution 1: you need: a home dir for the user

Solution 2: your harddisk is full, make space

Maximum number of allowed users

Symptom: When logging in you get the error message

Reached the maximum number of allowed users on 
this server.

Solution:

  • add your user to /usr/NX/users.db
vi /usr/NX/etc/users.db
  • restart the NX service using the command
/etc/init.d/nxserver restart

not available

If you get an error message that NX is not available or has been disabled, re-install it:

/usr/NX/bin/nxserver --uninstall
/usr/NX/bin/nxserver --install

maximum session number exceeded

List your user sessions with

nxkill --list

Then kill them like this:

# ps -A | grep -i nx
 3435 ?        00:00:00 nxserver
 3477 ?        00:00:00 nxssh
 3481 ?        00:00:00 nxnode
 3576 ?        00:00:03 nxagent
 3579 ?        00:00:00 nxserver
 3586 ?        00:00:00 nxssh
 3594 ?        00:00:00 nxnode
28689 ?        00:00:00 nxserver
28732 ?        00:00:00 nxssh
28737 ?        00:00:00 nxnode
28830 ?        00:25:54 nxagent
28833 ?        00:00:00 nxserver
28838 ?        00:02:01 nxssh
28848 ?        00:00:00 nxnode
# nxkill --kill --pid 28830

no sessions are active

enable users

If you cannot log in to the NX server and get an error message like

maximum session number exceeded

AND

nxkill --list 

shows you there are no active user sessions, this can be the case because your user is not enabled to log in. To find out if your user is enabled to log in, use

nxserver --userlist

You will be able to log in with all users that are shown then.

Re-install NX

If no sessions are shown, you will have to re-install NX:

/usr/NX/bin/nxserver --uninstall
/usr/NX/bin/nxserver --install

See also