TightVNC with desktop environment on Jetson Nano 2GB in headless mode

Autonomous Machines Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
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I spent a lot of time trying to get a desktop environment working with VNC when setting up Jetson Nano 2GB in headless mode. The instructions in README-vnc.txt don’t work since vino-server launches only if the desktop environment starts, which it doesn’t if we’re in headless mode. Finally stumbled across these instructions for Raspberry Pi using TightVNC that got it to work:

You can perform the above instructions after the usual console-based headless mode setup. Before starting the VNC server, add the following line to ~/.vnc/xstartup (launch a throwaway VNC server to create this file if it doesn’t exist.):

startlxde &

The above will start the LXDE desktop environment when VNC starts.

Also, in the instructions above to configure VNC to launch at boot, replace ‘pi’ with your username on Jetson nano. E.g.

@reboot su - <username> -c '/usr/bin/tightvncserver -geometry 1280x720'
3 Likes
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Nice! Thanks for sharing to community!

1 Like
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Hi, when i do this the vncviewer says “The connection refused by the computer”

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Yes, worked for me. Thanks!

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While doing launch at boot by ‘sudo crontab -e’ am getting ’ bad time specifier errors in crontab file, can’t install.

Any suggestions?

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Update : We are able to edit the crontab file from putty and not from terminal inside the JN desktop.

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Hi, I followed instructions, and I do have a Xtightvnc server running which I can connect to. My problem is about resolution: i want to use 1600x1200 instead of 1280x720.

  • the crontab entry is useless: the Xtightvnc server starts at each reboot without it.
    so resolution cannot be set there

  • I searched the system for vnc/tightvnc related start/configuration files, found none, created parameters files in /etc, in {HOME} and in all canonical locations without any effect.

The Xtightvncserver process is started with 1280x720 geometry:
Xtightvnc :1 -desktop X -auth /home/myuser>/.Xauthority -geometry 1280x720 -depth 24 -rfbwait 120000 -rfbauth /home//vnc/passwd -rfbport 5901 -fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1/,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/ -co /etc/X11/rgb

but I don’t know how to change it.
and I don’t know who launch that process: it is somehow tied to systemd … but I cannot point out the script that launches it

Any help is gretly apreciated!
Flavio