use GUI on multiple VNC sessions on linux server simultaneously

Amsoht commented 4 months ago

The feature request

We have a server running on ubuntu 20.04. We have git and github-desktop installed. When I connect via ssh to the server with user1 and use VNC to have a graphical desktop interface. I can start github-desktop and use it. If user2 connects to the server via ssh at the same time and uses their own VNC session, starting github-desktop does not work (no error message given). Only if user1 closes their github-desktop GUI, then user2 can successully start their github-desktop session. Is there a way that user1 and user2 can both use github-desktop at the same time?

Proposed solution

Maybe there is an obvious solution to this, that I am not familiar with? Something like installing github-desktop for each user individually in some way? Any help on this much appriciated!

Additional context

Why do we need this feature? We have a comlex data evaluation software running on our server. Multiple users make changes to the data evaluation (i.e. changing software parameters in a variety of text files) and we track these changes using git. Our workflow would certainly benefit from being able to use the github-desktop GUI in multiple sessions at the same time.

shiftkey commented 4 months ago

If user2 connects to the server via ssh at the same time and uses their own VNC session, starting github-desktop does not work (no error message given

I need more details from the application to be able to troubleshoot further. Please check the logs created at ~/.config/GitHub\ Desktop/logs/ from around the time of the issue for user2 to see if there's any helpful messages that might explain the underlying behaviour.

I'm not aware of why using VNC would prevent another user from launching the app, but this isn't an area that I've used (it's also been a couple of decades since I used a VNC client and server in anger).

github-actions[bot] commented 4 months ago

Thank you for your issue! We haven’t gotten a response to our questions above. With only the information that is currently in the issue, we don’t have enough information to take action. We’re going to close this but don’t hesitate to reach out if you have or find the answers we need. If you answer our questions above, this issue will automatically reopen.

Amsoht commented 3 months ago

Hi there, sorry that it took me so long. Here is what gets written to user1 log:

2024-06-21T14:47:11.451Z - info: [main] Received possible protocol arguments: 2
2024-06-21T14:47:13.340Z - info: [ui] [AppStore.withAuthenticatingUser] account found for repository: 217-scripts - TaunusObservatory (has token)
2024-06-21T14:47:14.618Z - info: [ui] [RepositoryIndicatorUpdater]: Refreshing sidebar indicators for 8 repositories took 3.1s of which 0.0s paused, total 3.1s

In fact, for user2 there is no ~/.config/GitHub\ Desktop at all! So it may not be an vnc server issue after all? Possibly it's an issue with how our server and the users are set up. I use ssh -C -L XXX1:localhost:XXX1 user1@serverip to connect to user1. The ssh terminal states I am logged in as user1. When opening VNC viewer and using a terminal there, it states I am logged in as user1. So far so good. Then I use ssh -C -L XXX2:localhost:XXX2 user2@serverip to connect to user2. The ssh terminal states I am logged in as user2. When opening VNC viewer and using a terminal there, it states I am logged in as user1. This is quite confusing. I'll talk to the guy who set up our server and try and post an update here.

shiftkey commented 1 month ago

I'll talk to the guy who set up our server and try and post an update here.

Please reopen if you have anything else to add. Otherwise I'm going to close this out due to inactivity.

shiftkey / desktop