Remote mouse pointer not visible in VNC

Question

I used VNC desktops as a kind of collaboration server, as shared planning and pair programming environment for a long time. Now my latest iteration uses a KVM guest running Fedora 17 "Beefy Miracle", the Cinnamon desktop environment and an X11VNC server. The X11VNC server is automatically started with the desktop environment using the following command:

x11vnc -localhost -many -shared -display :0 -bg

My problem is that depending on the VNC client, the mouse pointer of the remote system which is shown through VNC is not synchronized to my client. I really need this, so I can see what my partner is doing on the desktop.

When using Vinagre 3.2.1 on Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) or Vinagre 2.3.0.3 on Debian Squeeze (6.0) and I don't have my local mouse pointer inside the VNC view, I cannot see the mouse pointer of my remote system, nor its movement. When using TightVNC on Windows 7, I can recognize a mouse pointer trace for very short amounts of time after moving the mouse, but it is not clearly visible. Using UltraVNC on Windows 7 the mouse pointer is clearly visible all the time.

With Gnome 2 I never had any problems with remote pointer synchronization, using exactly the same clients. I suspect this could have something to do with Cinnamon's dependency on 3D acceleration. On the other hand, it doesn't change anything to start Cinnamon's fallback environment Cinnamon 2D.

Update: Same effect when I use Gnome 3.

Solution

Using tigervnc-server instead of x11vnc solved this problem. Note that tigervnc-server brings it's own Xserver instead of hooking into a running one.

Comments

[user9517]

Your question is off topic for Serverfault because it doesn't appear to relate to servers/networking or desktop infrastructure in a professional environment. It may be on topic for Superuser but please search their site for similar questions that may already have the answer you're looking for. It may also be on topic for U&L but again, please search before asking.

[Admin]

Same question on different sites: 1 2 3 4