Edit: Found answer here: https://groups.google.com/g/tigervnc-users/c/c4mihwmz_bI
Apparently only local sessions have access to certain HW. Audio devices are also in group audio, so I added my main user to that. Might be the fix for other stuff if I figure out the exact issues.
So I have a Mini PC running Linux Mint (headless) that I want to (sometimes) access over VNC remotely.
Using just TigerVNC has issues. First, XFCE got reset to its defaults. I don’t mind this too much. There are some password prompts and all power options other than “Log Out” are inaccessible (DBus seems to be running if that’s related. But also, more just annoying than an issue.)
The biggest problem is with audio. There appear to be no audio devices with aplay -l when run as regular user, but they do show up for root.
I tried running a session as root, but…
User
Root
I don’t even get the Dummy Output.
It seems to have a problem with connecting to PipeWire (maybe because root can’t use DBus? (just a guess, remembering errors of some apps when run as root))
So that’s what happens before logging in with LightDM.
If I do login in GUI, things will magically work
(The Mint customization stays broken after it happens once)
So I am guessing some more stuff is started when using LightDM, and I’d like to know what exactly it is, to reproduce it.
As for why not keep using autologin:
- I don’t want a GUI session running when unnecessary
- x11vnc is somehow extremely slow compared to tigervnc even with same compression, quality and resolution
Thanks.