Customising the procedure

The instructions above may give you a window of a different size or shape to the one you want, or one with an unfamiliar window manager or with initial applications different from your preferred ones. The following tips can be used to modify the way VNC works.

• Window geometry: Geometry of the VNC window can be specified in the normal X fashion, i.e. as a command line flag like -geometry 600x900, either as an option to vncserver (which affects the shape of the display itself) or as an option to vncviewer (which affects the window the display is shown in -- if the window is too small for the display it will have scroll bars).
• Startup applications: When started with the vncserver command the VNC server executes the script .vnc/xstartup (created the first time vncserver is run) in your home directory. By default this starts one xterm and the twm window manager. By editing .vnc/xstartup this behaviour can be modified; by copying or linking your .xsession or .xinitrc to it the VNC window can be given the same behaviour as your normal X session.
• Leaving the server running: It isn't necessary to kill the VNC server at the end of a session, or indeed ever; the only important thing is not to leave an ever increasing number of unused servers running on the system. If it's more convenient, you can simply close the VNC viewer window at the end of a session, and next time you wish to use it start vncviewer again, without having to rerun vncserver.

Much more information on configuration and options can be found at http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/.