RaspberryPi Desktop Sharing via VNC

The problem: Raspberry connected to a TV / share the desktop

When connecting a RapsberryPi to a screen or TV to show something you surely would like to remote control the RasPi not only via shell (SSH) but also via VNC to see exactly what is displayed on the remote screen. So what we are looking for is not “a new remote desktop” (as provided by a lot of tools) but “desktop sharing”. And of course you want the desktop shared automatically when the Raspberry Pi boots.

Yet thanks to the great and large Rapsberry Pi community, this is a pretty easy task – if you know how to do it …

Solution: x11vnc

Use raspi-config to configure the raspi to “Enable Boot to Desktop”.

Install x11vnc:

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

Configure x11vnc to set a password automatically when it is started:

sudo x11nvc -storepasswd

Create a file /etc/init.d/x11vnc which is used on startup (mind the line breaks! Or just get it from GitHub). And set the permissions to 755 (sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/x11vnc).

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/x11vnc
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          x11vnc
# Required-Start:    lightdm
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: x11vnc
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

case "$1" in
start)
echo "Starting x11vnc ... "
x11vnc -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -rfbauth /root/.vnc/passwd -no6 -noipv6 -reopen -forever -shared

;;
stop)
echo "Killing x11vnc ..."
killall x11vnc
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/x11vnc {start|stop}"
exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0

You could now test the script already via:

sudo service x11vnc start

Tell the RasPi to start x11vnc automatically after the graphical environment has started:

sudo update-rc.d x11vnc defaults

Done. Reboot your RasPi to test if everything did work. When it has come up again, you should be able to connect to the desktop from your Linux/Mac/Windows machine with a VNC client of your choice, for example TightVNC. Simply enter the host name of the Raspi in the connect dialogue and hit ok. That’s it.