Issue with vncserver not starting?

[Ed Greshko]

On 02/22/2012 05:57 AM, Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
> I've fount that the vncserver doesn't start correctly after a power
> outage or non-normal shutdown.  It appears that file in the
> /tmp/.X11-unix directory is left after the reboot, and causes the
> startup to fail.
>
> My solution at the moment is to have a script in cron.hourly that
> checks if it is running, and it not it removes the file, and restarts
> the service.
> Example using port 88 (5988)
>
> run=`systemctl status vncserver@:88.service | grep running | cut -b 20-26`
> if [ -z "$run" ] ; then
>    rm /tmp/.X11-unix/X88
>    systemctl start vncserver@:88.service
> fi
> ==========
>
> Should these files be removed automatically on a restart?
> Is it a vncserver issue or a system issue or how things are suppose to
> work?

Sounds like a vncserver issue.  It should be able to determine, on
startup, that files have been left "orphaned" when a crash has occurred
and clean them up.  IMO, you should check to see if a bugzilla exits and
if not file one.

[James Wilkinson]

Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
> I've fount that the vncserver doesn't start correctly after a power
>    outage or non-normal shutdown.  It appears that file in the
>    /tmp/.X11-unix directory is left after the reboot, and causes the
>    startup to fail.
>
> My solution at the moment is to have a script in cron.hourly that
>    checks if it is running, and it not it removes the file, and restarts
>    the service.

An alternative is to put a line like
none                    /tmp                    tmpfs   nodev,noexec 0 0
into /etc/fstab. This will have the effect of automatically clearing out
/tmp every boot.

What it actually does is turn /tmp into a tmpfs mount. If you have
plenty of RAM free, then it will hold the contents of /tmp *just* in
memory. If you have almost all your RAM being used for programs and
caching (the normal state on a computer that’s been running a while),
the kernel may choose to reclaim some of the memory that’s being used
for the contents of /tmp, using the same algorithms as normal. It will
write the contents to swap space.

Obviously, if you’re used to putting multi-gigabyte files in /tmp,
you’ll need to either start using /var/tmp or making sure you have
plenty of swap.

James.