I'm attempting to set up local screen sharing on a machine running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS desktop. This machine serves as a Jellyfin server and NAS. It has no dedicated monitor.
The problem I'm running into is that the GUI (settings > sharing) seems to have absolutely no control over vino-server.
In the GUI, I can toggle screen sharing on and off, tweak the security settings, etc. The GUI shows the server as running, but ufw show listening doesn't show vino listening on any ports, and I can't connect from the client.
I've had some success using sudo /usr/lib/vino/vino-server to start vino from the terminal. I can see that vino is listening on port 5900 or 5901, and I can connect from the client (Remmina on another Ubuntu 20.04 machine). But I still can't control vino through the GUI. I've used the gsettings command for things like turning off encryption, setting show prompt to false, setting view only to false, etc.
I'm not happy with running vino from the terminal as a solution because the gsettings commands aren't persistent after I close vino with ctrl+c and restart it (except for the password I set). Also, I've had issues with the VNC server switching to view only unexpectedly (then I have to go get my monitor again and all that).
I've tried reinstalling vino, setting it as a startup application via the GUI and creating vino-server.desktop, vino-preferences (obsolete) and made sure UFW wasn't interfering at all. Ports 5900 and 5901 are open to the local network.
After hours of research, I haven't been able to find a solution, or figured out why the connection between the GUI and vino is seemingly severed. All I need is a reliable local VNC server that launches on startup and asks for a password. What do you think?
Thanks very much for your help!
