VNC-Server module

[davidak]

Issue description

I would like to connect to a headless NixOS system via VNC.

I looked many times for "vnc" in NixOS options, but found nothing.

Now i found out, that there is a x11vnc package, but again no option.

So i searched nixpkgs for "x11vnc" and found: terminal-server.nix

It looks like what i want, but has no option to enable and is not documented anywhere.

Please provide a proper vnc-server option!

cc who edited terminal-server: @domenkozar @edolstra

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-to-setup-vnc-server-on-nixos/7603/4

[stale[bot]]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[davidak]

still needed

[stale[bot]]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[w1n5l0w]

still needed

[uralbash]

I found a solution (taken from this example https://git.thalheim.io/Mic92/stockholm/src/branch/master/makefu/2configs/vncserver.nix and https://github.com/hyphon81/Nixtack/blob/master/noVNC/noVNC.nix)

configuration.nix file:

{ config, pkgs, lib, ... }:
with lib;
let
  pwfile = "/home/user/.vnc/passwd";  # vncpasswd
  pwtmp = "/tmp/vnc-password";
  user = "user";
  vnc_port = 5900;
  web_port = 6080;

  novnc = pkgs.callPackage /home/user/.mynix/novnc/default.nix {};
in
{
   ....

  systemd.services = {
    # TODO: terminal-server without a real gui and virtual display manager
    terminal-server = {
      description = "VNC Terminal Server";
      after = [ "display-manager.service"  "graphical.target" ];
      wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
      serviceConfig = {
        User = user;
        Restart = "always";
        ExecStartPre = pkgs.writers.writeDash "terminal-pre" ''
          sleep 5
          install -m0700 -o ${user} ${pwfile} ${pwtmp}
        '';
        ExecStart = "${pkgs.tigervnc}/bin/x0vncserver -display :0 -rfbport ${toString vnc_port} -passwordfile ${pwfile}";
        PermissionsStartOnly = true;
        PrivateTmp = true;
      };
    };

    terminal-web = {
      description = "noVNC Web Server";
      after = [ "terminal-server.service" "network.target" ];
      wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
      serviceConfig = {
        User = "nobody";
        ExecStart = "${novnc}/bin/launch-novnc.sh --listen ${toString web_port} --vnc localhost:${toString vnc_port}";
        PrivateTmp = true;
      };
    };
  };

  # Nginx for VNC
  services.nginx.enable = true;
  services.nginx.virtualHosts._.locations = {
    "/" = {
      root = "${novnc}";
      index = "vnc_auto.html";
    };
    "/websockify" = {
      proxyPass = "http://127.0.0.1:6080/";
      extraConfig = ''
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        # VNC connection timeout
        proxy_read_timeout 61s;
        # Disable cache
        proxy_buffering off;
      '';
    };
  };
 ...
}

.mynix/novnc/default.nix file:

{ stdenv, lib, fetchurl, pkgs }:
# source: https://github.com/hyphon81/Nixtack/blob/master/noVNC/noVNC.nix
let
in

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  name = "novnc-${version}";
  #version = "1.3.0";
  version = "0.6.2";

  src = fetchurl {
    url = "https://github.com/novnc/noVNC/archive/v${version}.tar.gz";
    #sha256 = "0dh3564xfsg5cy93fc36magpvs3y2sbmybqk9l2z9scw9i8r33zf";
    sha256 = "16ygbdzdmnfg9a26d9il4a6fr16qmq0ix9imfbpzl0drfbj7z8kh";
  };
  p = lib.makeBinPath [ pkgs.nettools pkgs.python3Packages.websockify
                               pkgs.coreutils pkgs.which pkgs.procps ];
  patchPhase = ''
    sed -i '1aset -efu\nexport PATH=${p}\n' utils/launch.sh
  '';
  installPhase = ''
    mkdir -p $out/bin
    cp utils/launch.sh $out/bin/launch-novnc.sh
    chmod +x $out/bin/launch-novnc.sh
    mkdir -p $out/images
    cp -r images/* $out/images/
    mkdir -p $out/include
    cp -r include/* $out/include/
    cp favicon.ico $out
    cp vnc.html $out
    cp vnc_auto.html $out
  '';

  meta = with lib; {
    homepage = http://novnc.com/info.html;
    repositories.git = git://github.com/novnc/noVNC.git;
    description = ''
      A HTML5 VNC Client
    '';
    license = licenses.mpl20;
  };
}

If you do not need a web client, you can only use terminal-server. I hope it will help you.

[ShalokShalom]

There is the following, that is already declaratively configured with yaml, so we could easily implement it https://github.com/kasmtech/KasmVNC