How does noVNC work in VM Console?

[sonofdbn]

I often take a look at what's going on in my VMs using the VM Console option in the unRAID GUI, which uses noVNC. But I'm wondering how unRAID is able to do this when I never knowingly set up a VNC server in the VMs. Is unRAID doing something special/different?

 

For example, I was able to use the VM Console to play around with a new Linux VM. But when I tried to VNC into the same VM using TightVNC on my Win 10 PC, I couldn't connect. I tried both the standard 5900 port and a few 57xx ports, which the VM Console seems to use.

 

I don't know if using noVNC on the PC would have worked, but couldn't find any reasonably simple way of using noVNC on Windows.

[SimonF]

29 minutes ago, sonofdbn said:

I often take a look at what's going on in my VMs using the VM Console option in the unRAID GUI, which uses noVNC. But I'm wondering how unRAID is able to do this when I never knowingly set up a VNC server in the VMs. Is unRAID doing something special/different?

 

For example, I was able to use the VM Console to play around with a new Linux VM. But when I tried to VNC into the same VM using TightVNC on my Win 10 PC, I couldn't connect. I tried both the standard 5900 port and a few 57xx ports, which the VM Console seems to use.

 

I don't know if using noVNC on the PC would have worked, but couldn't find any reasonably simple way of using noVNC on Windows.

The vnc is part of qemu/libvirt stack. You can use external clients I use virt viewer but should work with other vnc clients.

 

[JonathanM]

29 minutes ago, sonofdbn said:

I was able to use the VM Console to play around with a new Linux VM. But when I tried to VNC into the same VM using TightVNC on my Win 10 PC, I couldn't connect.

Which IP were you connecting to? The VNC console is listening on the host (Unraid) IP, on port 590X, where X starts with 0 on the first VM started, and increments by 1 for each additional VM started.

 

If you want to install a VNC server inside the guest OS that will listen on the guests IP, you can certainly do that, I prefer nomachine, it has audio support out of the box, and feels more performant to me.