Misleading instructions in Remote Desktop (vino-preferences) settings panel on Hardy

Bug #237883 reported by Roger Lancefield
8
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
vino (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

I'm running 8.04 (Hardy Heron) 32-bit desktop edition with all the latest updates as of 6th June, 2008 @ 12:28.

This is obviously very minor from a technical standpoint and presumably requires merely updating a simple message string, but it's just the kind of thing that confuses and disheartens new users (and makes them think that Ubuntu doesn't "Just work").

When a user enables the "Allow others to view your desktop" option within the vino-preferences dialog box (System > Preferences > Remote Desktop), the instruction:
    Users can view your desktop using this command:
    vncviewer [host_name]:0
is revealed.

With Hardy now using Vinagre as its remote viewer the command "vncviewer" is no longer available by default (requiring the manual installation of xvnc4viewer, or alternative package). Unwitting users will be attempting to run the suggested command only to be presented with an error message when they do so. Moreover, it seems that Vinagre requires the host name suffixed with the TCP/IP port number (e.g. :5900), and not the VNC session number (e.g. :0). Finally, it might be more helpful to those new to networking if the IP address rather than the host name were used in the example command. For those using static addressing, the former will only work if there is a corresponding entry in the hosts file.

Apart from these things the example command string is fine as it is ;-)

Related branches

Revision history for this message
Roger Lancefield (rlancefield) wrote :

Further to my report above...

I should acknowledge that the example command in the Remote Desktop preferences will (of course) only be inappropriate for remote clients that do not have the "vncviewer" command available by default, such as Hardy Heron. For earlier versions of Ubuntu (and, I assume, certain other distros), the example command will still be valid.

Revision history for this message
Ralph Janke (txwikinger) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in vinagre.

Changed in vinagre:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Revision history for this message
Roger Lancefield (rlancefield) wrote :

Sorry for the missing information Ralph.

Running
dpkg -S /usr/bin/vino-preferences
reveals that the package name is "vino".

Thanks for your help.

Revision history for this message
Jonh Wendell (wendell) wrote :

Vino 2.25.5 has a newer dialog, which fixes the issues mentioned in this bug.

Changed in vino:
status: New → Fix Committed
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

This bug was fixed in the package vino - 2.25.91-0ubuntu1

---------------
vino (2.25.91-0ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release (LP: #330215)
    - Install autostart file in $sysconfdir/xgd/autostart. Usually you
      should pass the argument --sysconfdir=/etc to configure (or
      autogen.sh) script.
    - i18n related fixes.
    - Minor fixes. (LP: #196675, #228370, #237883, #289034)
    - Translations (ast, bg, ca, da, es, et, eu, hu, nl, or, pl, pt_BR,
      pt, ro, sv, th, vi, zh_HK, zh_TW)
  * Add Vcs-Bzr in debian/control.in
  * Re-generate debian/control

 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:35:56 +0100

Changed in vino:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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