Cut / paste fail and crash in multilevel environment

[Dave Walker - Labelled Security Limited]

Hiya folks,

I've been having an interesting issue with the free version of vncviewer (well, the version bundled with Solaris 10, anyway...), and am wondering whether there's a fix in the commercial version. What I'm seeing is 100% reproducible, and goes like this:

In a labelled zone on Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions - classic sparse-root zone, with /usr/bin/vncviewer mounted readonly over loopback:

* open a session onto a VNC server (I'm using the one built into Fedora 15 for this, although it's not exclusively a Fedora problem; Ubuntu 10.10 exhibits it too)

I get the usual start-up details:

# vncviewer 10.0.1.2:0

VNC Viewer Free Edition 4.1.3 for X - built Dec 3 2008 23:03:17
Copyright (C) 2002-2008 RealVNC Ltd
See http://www.realvnc.com for information on VNC.

Wed Aug 17 21:49:03 2011
CConn: connected to host 10.0.1.2 port 5900
Connection: Server supports RFB protocol version 3.7
Connection: Using RFB protocol version 3.7

Wed Aug 17 21:49:08 2011
TXImage: Using default colormap and visual, TrueColor, depth 24.
CConn: Using pixel format depth 6 (8bpp) rgb222
CConn: Using ZRLE encoding
CConn: Throughput 20270 kbit/s - changing to hextile encoding
CConn: Throughput 20270 kbit/s - changing to full colour
CConn: Using pixel format depth 24 (32bpp) little-endian rgb888
CConn: Using hextile encoding

* now, open a terminal in the session, type something, highlight it, put it in the copy buffer

* move pointer out of the window showing the VNC session, the window closes and the following error pops up in the terminal used to launch vncviewer:

X Error of failed request: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
Major opcode of failed request: 18 (X_ChangeProperty)
Resource id in failed request: 0x400001
Serial number of failed request: 20318
Current serial number in output stream: 23019

Any ideas? I wonder whether "something unconventional" may be happening in terms of vncviewer having its own cut / paste system rather than the one provided by the X server; does cut / paste work OK between different VNC sessions on a non label-aware system?

Cheers,

--
Dave Walker
Labelled Security Limited
Tel: [phone]
Twitter: @labeledsecurity
http://www.labelledsecurity.co.uk/

Labelled Security Limited is registered in England and Wales, No. 7666489 ; VAT 114 6198 23
Registered Office: 1 Andromeda House, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berkshire, RG7 8AP

[Philip Herlihy]

Why is it that sometimes you have to set Caps-Lock on your local keyboard to
get lower-case characters on the remote machine? Is there a fix?

Philip Herlihy

[Dale Eshelman]

When Caps-Lock is set on on the remote machine, it requires the local machine to set Caps-Lock on to get lower case.

VNC it appears does not map the keyboard correctly is my assumption. There is no way to know the remote machine has the keyboard caps-lock set on or off unless it is right there close where you can walk over and fix the keyboard and turn the caps-lock off on the remote machine.


On Aug 29, 2011, at 02:44 PM, Philip Herlihy wrote:

Why is it that sometimes you have to set Caps-Lock on your local keyboard to
get lower-case characters on the remote machine? Is there a fix?

Philip Herlihy




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Dale Eshelman
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The closer I get to the pain of glass in Windoz, the farther I can see and I see a Mac on the horizon. Made by Apple - the best personal computers in the world.

[Mike Miller]

Post by Dale Eshelman
When Caps-Lock is set on on the remote machine, it requires the local
machine to set Caps-Lock on to get lower case.

Funny that in so many years of using VNC that never happened to me. I had
no idea. Maybe I never left capslock on on the server machine. Does the
operating system matter? I'm using mostly Linux/UNIX Xvnc.

Mike

[Dale Eshelman]

I know it happens on Windows - 98, 2000, and XP. Have not used it on UNIX machines.
I went a long time before I accidentally left the caps lock on. Took a while to figure it out.

Dale-

Post by Dale Eshelman
When Caps-Lock is set on on the remote machine, it requires the local machine to set Caps-Lock on to get lower case.

Funny that in so many years of using VNC that never happened to me. I had no idea. Maybe I never left capslock on on the server machine. Does the operating system matter? I'm using mostly Linux/UNIX Xvnc.

Mike

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To remove yourself from the list visit:
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Dale Eshelman
***@gmail.com

MonaVie (Distr ID 1316953)
http://www.monavie.com/Web/US/en/product_overview.dhtml

Kaching Kaching, Inc. (KCKC.OB)
http://www.mykachingkaching.com/daleeshelman

The closer I get to the pain of glass in Windoz, the farther I can see and I see a Mac on the horizon. Made by Apple - the best personal computers in the world.

[Mike Miller]

Post by Dale Eshelman
I know it happens on Windows - 98, 2000, and XP. Have not used it on
UNIX machines.
I went a long time before I accidentally left the caps lock on. Took a
while to figure it out.

Thanks, Dale. I'm glad you discovered this before I did!

I'll have to check that it doesn't work like this on Linux/UNIX with other
toggled keyboard settings. I use Shift-Caps lock to toggle between US and
US/International keyboard.

Mike