Ivan Popov ()
Tue, 10 Mar 1998 20:30:48 +0100 (MET)
> btw: what about an option for Xvnc to use the password from
> /etc/password (or shadow, or even better pam) instead of maintaining
> it's own password list.
Several things to keep in mind:
- vnc was not designed specifically for UNIX, it is multiplatform
- existing ("default") authentication methods even and not only in UNIX
are far from perfect, meaning e.g. passwords in clear text on the net,
and they are different for different platforms
- it was developed for specific internal use and made available for us
without any warranty and even any suitability hope :)
To make vnc (excellent by itself) even more useful we _may_ consider
changing its behaviour, or at least I think so :)
but in this case we should not compromise its universal nature.
That's why I insist on separating authentication (and connection
establishment) from the main (graphics/events) machine. It _may_
work better being implemented as "modules".
Look at vnc protocol as at a generalisation of terminal escape seqs,
being applicable to graphical screens as well. From this point of view
"server" is in fact only a graphical library usable by any user program.
Just for convenience we can run Xserver as one such program. Otherwise
we could link xclients with suitable (not existing yet?) libs and run them
direcly against a vnc viewer.
Window management becomes in this case a task for a pty manager like
MGR (or like alphanumerical "window" program). Main problem would be to
create multiple windows on behalf of one program. It would be out of scope
a "virtual desktop" protocol that vnc is.
Enough said.
Regards,
-- Ivan Popov <> Systemman, Driftavdelningen, Matematiska institutionen, Chalmers TH
This archive was generated by on Wed Feb 03 1999 - 15:32:54 GMT