RHEL 7 VNC Setup - "Oh no! Somethign has gone wrong"

If RHEL 7 was installed as a minimal install

 yum grouplist
Available environment groups:
   Minimal Install

then setting up vnc by installing tigervnc-server would result in following screen when login with a vncviwer.

Installing X windows did not resolve the issue

yum groupinstall "X Window System"

The minimal installation does not have any GUI related components as such the vnc has no desktop to connect to. Installing KDE desktop

yum groupinstall "kde-desktop"

or the GNOME the default desktop for RHEL7

yum groupinstall GNOME

resolved the issue.

Related Post
Blank VNC Screen

Tunneling VNC Over SSH Using PuTTY

By default VNC runs on port 5901. This port may not always be open for access. Vnc access maybe needed for GUI base work such as runInstaller, DBCA, DBUA etc. (there are other ways to get GUI to desktop, such as Xming). In situation where VNC port is not open it could be tunneled over SSH. This post shows how to use PuTTY for this effect.
1. Set the tunneling information before opening the ssh connection. Source port is the local listening port. In this case port 5999 has been chosen as the local listener port. Destination is a host:port combination. In this case the local host is the destination host and port is set 5901 which the remote vnc listening port.

2. Once Click add to make the tunneling take effect when ssh connection is established.

3.Establish the ssh connection.
4. Connect a vncviwer specifying the source port used earlier.

If the source port had been 5901 (the default vnc port) then the vncviwer connection could use the following

Blank VNC Screen

A new install RHEL 5 remote server handed over to install Oracle. Verified required Linux packages are installed and installed missing ones. Start VNC to run the web browser to directly download Oracle software (11.2.0.3) to server but VNC screen shown is blank.

Had already done the usual VNC configuration such as uncommenting

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
 unset SESSION_MANAGER
 exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

in .vnc/xstartup but still no luck.


After some searching one suggestion was to install X windows system.

yum groupinstall "X Window System"

Run VNC again blank screen has disappeared but the desktop is still not "nice".

Installed gnome desktop

yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"

and change the twm with gnome in .vnc/xstartup

#gnome-session &
twm &

No difference still the same desktop as before. Finally decided to installed KDE desktop

yum groupinstall "kde-desktop"

Finally the "nice" desktop.

It's not necessary to install X-windows and gnome desktop and then KDE. Installing KDE desktop when the blank screen is visible will resolve the blank screen issue.