Spin Ink

If you have tried to install FreeNX on SuSE Linux recently you may of had some trouble. This because on the 22 of June, NoMachine released an updated NX suite. SuSE 10.0 and 10.1 shipped with an older version of the NX Server. As a result, you cannot use the 1.5 NX Server that ships with SuSE Linux and the 2.0 NX Client . Instead, you should download the latest RPM’s from the NoMachine website. If you do not know what NX is all about then here is the description from their website:

NoMachine NX is a Terminal Server and Remote Access solution based on a comprising set of enterprise class open source technologies. Thanks to the outstanding compression, session resilience and resource management developed on top of the X-Window system, and the integration with the powerful audio, printing and resource sharing capabilities of the Unix world, NoMachine NX makes it possible to run any graphical application on any operating system across any network connection as if you were sitting in front of your computer.

All 3 of the following packages must be installed on the machine you wish to be the server. for any client machines, you need only install the NX Client.

• NX Free Edition
  
• NX Node
• NX Client

Upgrading from NX 1.4 or 1.5

If you are upgrading your current NX Server to version 2.x from version 1.4 or 1.5, then you must completely uninstall NX from your machine before you proceed. I removed my current NX packages by opening Smart, searching for NX, and telling it to remove ‘NX’ and ‘freenx’, if I remember the package names correctly. Once they were removed, I deleted my ‘.nx’ directory in the home directory of my NX server machine. I then rebooted, not because I had too, but because I was too lazy look for a running service or other obstacles to proceeding. Once my server was rebooted, I proceeded with the following instructions without any hassle.

Installing NX for the First Time

If this is your first time installing NX server, you can simply open a root console, then change to the directory where the above packages were downloaded (most likely your users home directory) and install them with the following command:

rpm -Uvh nx*.rpm

This will install the NX Server, NX Node, and NX Client. The last thing you see before being returned to prompt should be something along the lines of:

NX> 700 Bye.

If this is the case, you are ready to install NX Client on your client machines and attempt to connect to the server. There used to be a setup command that you ran after installing the server. It would appear that this is all handled at the end of the RPM’s install script.

Running NX Client

After installing the NX Client on a Linux box running KDE, you can find the shortcuts for it here:

KMenu -> Internet -> NX Client for Linux

Put in the IP of the machine acting as the NX Server and attempt to make a connection. If this works, you are done. If it was unable to connect, then there is still some work to be done. As things went smoothly for me, It is hard to know what issues you might have. Be sure that If you are running the SuSE Firewall, and you are unless you specifically turned it off, you need to be sure that you poked a hole in it allowing SSH traffic.