Says a new desktop has been started for machine, but shows no available desktops

[krshna]

I am connecting from MacOS BigSur 11.6.5 to a Linux NoMachine Server running on Ubuntu 20.04. Both are running  version 7.10.1. The desktop manager on Ubuntu is GDM3.

I have been able to successfully connect in the past, but after sometime when I try to reconnect I am greeted by the following error:

It seems that a new display has been already started on the requested machine. Do you want to connect to it?

When I accept, it shows me an empty list of desktops running on the server. However, I have confirmed that the desktop is still running, and have checked the NoMachine server is running (and have also tried restarting).

Later, if I try restarting and connecting with a new connection configuration (from my client), I get the following error:

Cannot detect any display running. Do you want NoMachine to create a new display and proceed to connect to the desktop?

Please advise on how to debug further

[Britgirl]

Hi,

NoMachine for Linux includes a nxagent virtual X server that you can run, just to make one X server that the system can “see”, one that can run your desktop software and one you can connect to. When the Linux machine is headless, NoMachine detects that there is no X server running and prints the message:

Cannot detect any display running. Do you want NoMachine to create a new display and proceed to connect to the desktop?

to which you should click “Yes”. Did this appear the first time you connected? What happened? What happened the second time?

When you connected previously, and it was working, is it possible that a monitor was attached and on?  After connecting the first time, and then disconnecting the session, did the monitor turn off or maybe it’s a laptop and you closed the lid? It could be that the graphics card installed there did not correctly detect one or the other events (so it’s not NoMachine at fault here).

Take a look at this article and follow the tips there:

Connecting to Linux headless machines with NoMachine
https://kb.nomachine.com/AR03P00973

Also, if Wayland is the display server running there, please check the article here:

https://kb.nomachine.com/AR02P00969

[krshna]

Thanks for the reply!

I was able to find the cause of the problem. I was also running an [removed] server which was using the same display port (:1) as the one for the Xserver desktop that nxserver was connecting to. As a result, it was failing because I think the display manager/Xserver was setup incorrectly.

[Britgirl]

Please take a look at: https://forums.nomachine.com/topic/vnc-considered-as-physical-desktop#post-9542.

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