Jetson VNC Tutorial

How to connect to RSX Jetson with VNC

VNC allows you to connect to the Jetson board remotely with a graphical user interface (xfce).

Yifan Lu, Kyrel Jerome

January 2020

System Requirement

• Any device with VNC software installed (computers, smart phones, tablets, etc.). We recommend using RealVNC Viewer (Download link)

How to Connect

• Make sure you are connected to the rsx_rover_router network.
• Log in to the board with ssh [email protected]. The IP address may have changed by the time you read this tutorial. You can use ifconfig and look under eth0 to find the current IP address.
• Start a VNC session with vncserver -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24. Note that to have the best experience, you can set the geometry parameter to your own screen resolution.
• You should now see a message telling you that the session is ready. See example below. In this case, the display number assigned to you is :2. Note this number, as you will need it to connect to the board and also to close your session later.

Warning: rsx-jetson:1 is taken because of /tmp/.X11-unix/X1
Remove this file if there is no X server rsx-jetson:1

New 'rsx-jetson:2 (rsx)' desktop is rsx-jetson:2

Starting applications specified in /home/rsx/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/rsx/.vnc/rsx-jetson:2.log

• Next you can open RealVNC Viewer on your computer, and create a new connection. In the VNC Server field, enter 192.168.1.50:590x. In this case, the IP address of the Jetson board is 192.168.1.50. You will need to replace x in the port number 590x with your display number. For example, a display number of :2 would mean that the port number is 5902.

Closing a Connection

• After you are done with the current session, you need to close the connection so the resource can be freed.
• To do so, run vncserver -kill :2 on the Jetson board. In this case, the display number is 2, you will need to replace it with your own display number.