VNC Client

Does any body know of an update to !Avalanche. Mine is dated 28 Dec 2009 (version 0.22).

On its own, it works very well. But, it does not sit nicely with other network activity:-
– Running !RDPclient at the same time can crash Avalance.
– Editing ShareFS files on the VNC server can crash Avalance.

Alternatively, Another VNC client?

Version 0.22 is the latest, AFAIK. You could also try ViNCe, but it’s even older than Avalanche.

I think we’re all holding out hope for Evince (no relation to ViNCe!) from Adrian Lees.
http://www.sendiri.co.uk/evince/index.html

– Running !RDPclient at the same time can crash Avalance.
– Editing ShareFS files on the VNC server can crash Avalance.

- Using Avalanche can crash Avalanche :)

Sorry to hear that. Coincidentally I’ve recently been going through some old projects from when I used to have time for that sort of thing. I got Avalanche building again, so went through some old emails reporting bugs, ran it through cppcheck and made a few fixes. One of those was a zero page access in the keyboard event handling which I suspect is responsible for a lot of the crashes, or zeropain errors.

I got Avalanche building again, so went through some old emails reporting bugs, ran it through cppcheck and made a few fixes. One of those was a zero page access in the keyboard event handling which I suspect is responsible for a lot of the crashes, or zeropain errors.

Good news that you are looking at it!
I had to stop using Avalanche on my ARMX6 as it rarely stayed up for more than 5 minutes. Odd really as it would do 20 minutes or more on the Pi3 or Iyonix before crashing out. It makes for an interesting experience doing an online Sainsbury shop controlling a Win10 laptop.

James: firstly I’d like to thank you for making Avalanche available. It’s a key application to administer a rather important 24/365 server that I have in an inaccessible place.

Secondly, I’d be happy to test any updated versions, and ultimately to use a new release. I can’t complain of any specific problem at the moment though.

James: firstly I’d like to thank you for making Avalanche available. It’s a key application to administer a rather important 24/365 server that I have in an inaccessible place.

I will second that.

It is only when I try to do some other network activies at the same time that I have any problems.

I got Avalanche building again

That sounds like very good news.

This is hopefully a more stable build. Amongst other things, this fixes a potential zero page access when handling wimp key press events, which I suspect is the main trigger for it abruptly crashing.

I’m currently unable to easily update the website, so I’ve put the download on GitHub instead (just the ZIP file):

https://github.com/effarig/ro_avalanche/releases/download/v0.24/avalanche.zip

Consider this a test release. Given I’ve not done this for either 8 or 11 years, depending on whether 0.23 was mythical or not, I could well have forgotten something. I used to have a nice streamlined process for this, alas no longer.

@James: v0.24 seems to run ok here, on a very initial test Titanium → RPi3

When the dust has settled, a couple of suggestions for when running in a window…
- could the ‘Toggle Size’ icon switch between min & max sizes?
- could the Hotlist Name be added to the window title?

Many thanks for reviving your memory and archives to re-compile Avalanche. Previously I only tended to use it for short periods, due to its instability, but I will now use it more.

I concur with Martin. I’ve been using Avalanche 0.22 for a long time, but this version has been rock solid this morning, from a Titanium to an ARMX6 and a Pi 4.

And again, thanks for resurrecting this from it’s dormant state.

Version 0.24 passes the “kick the tyres” test – I opened the window on my headless server straightaway.

It does remind me that there’s one little feature that would be nice – the ability to set the window to 100% in some quick way. The screen resolution on my desktop is 1920 * 1080, and on the server as 1280 * 1024, so if I set the screen size to 100%, there are no visual artifacts – it’s pixel for pixel. But it takes some very careful dragging to get 100%. It would be nice to get there in one click.

There may be some setting that should be using and I’ve forgotten about, of course.

0.24 is also looking good to me (with 0.22, 90% of the time it would crash on the first keypress (but then be fine after reloading))

Thanks James for providing a new version of this really useful and required application..

In my testing I have got 0.24 to crash when selecting in the view options “Lock aspect ratio”.

This is when using 0.24 on a RiscPC 4.39 displaying at 1024 × 768 32 Thousand colours to the ARMX6, running VNCSrv, displaying at 1920 × 1080 at 16m and the Auto colour option set in Avalanche.

I am using VNCSvr Front Enbd 2.07 and server module 0.21.

If I change the RiscPc to a display of 1280 × 720 with 32 Thousand colours then it does not abort/crash.

So it may be some of the scaling code is a bit of an issue?

The error I get is Internal error, trap While in trap handler:Internal error:Abort on data transfer at &0223FC58, pc &6223FC50: registers at 00024890.

Hope this helps.

– Running !RDPclient at the same time can crash Avalance.

Fixed

– Editing ShareFS files on the VNC server can crash Avalance.

Fixed

Thank You James. 0.24 is brilliant for me.

Could the Hotlist Name be added to the window title?

Is this not a VNC server issue?

I have the server name appearing on my Avalance windows. A different name appearing for each server.

But, I acheived it by editing VNCserver.

Avalanche correctly uses the window title supplied by the server.

I acheived it by editing VNCserver.

I can find no setting to do that – did you mean editing the vncserver module itself?
(which I could do … but a maintenance problem I would not want)

Version 0.24 seems to work fine on my 4té (RO 5.29), connecting to my ARMiniX (RO 5.23), but actually I never had considerable problems with it.
Connection to my Windows 10 machine is another story. This stopped working some while ago, and version 0.24 doesn’t change that, although I wasn’t expecting that. The other way around works incredibly well, with RealVNC on the Windows side and VNCserver on the RISC OS sides. Any thoughts?

I can find no setting to do that – did you mean editing the vncserver module itself?

I can release a new version which allows the session title to be specified.

Connection to my Windows 10 machine is another story. This stopped working some while ago, and version 0.24 doesn’t change that, although I wasn’t expecting that. The other way around works incredibly well, with RealVNC on the Windows side and VNCserver on the RISC OS sides. Any thoughts?

At a guess, the Windows server could be configured to only allow encrypted connections. (Feature request for James: Add support for the VeNCrypt security type with the X509 subtypes, perhaps via AcornSSL. I’ve recently been looking at adding support for it to the VNC server, and it was pretty straightforward)

I can find no setting to do that – did you mean editing the vncserver module itself?
(which I could do … but a maintenance problem I would not want)

Yes. Using !Edit – just make you do not change the length of the file!! Use spaces if necessary. Backup the original, although it is easily downloadable.

I decided it was no more of a maintenance problem than editing a config file.

The bit to change is near the end of the module where is it unusefully says RISC OS desktop

but a maintenance problem I would not want

Perhaps, we might see a simple update to VNC server, perhaps by putting the server name in the start file. (Otherwise an excellent program)

Whilst discussing Avalanche and VNCserver, I will take to opportunity to suggest another change to both.

In a past world, I used to use Win2VNC which gave seemless mouse movement across three monitors (even with different OSes on the computers attached behind the monitors)

Two or Three RISC OS desktop monitors side by side and a mouse going seemlessly across them would be absolutely brilliant.

To me, it doesn’t seem like a huge amount of work, as the client and server programs already exist.

James, Jeffrey, What do you think?

Perhaps, we might see a simple update to VNC server, perhaps by putting the server name in the start file.

Good idea – I support that request.

+1 for server name

Good to see a new version :)
Is it compiled with latest optimizations? for example VFP support?

I have some errors when trying to copy something inside my spreadsheet. I suspect the clipboard space is not big enough, or something like this.

On the VNC server side, I remember that:
"
Enable/disable use of the Filter Manager to detect screen updates when in the
Wimp. This results in lower CPU usage by the server and more responsive
screen updates. However note the current implementation does not catch all
types of screen redraw events (most significantly, mouse drag operations).
This feature requires RISC OS 4 or later.
"

And I wonder if it would be possible to just update everything around the mouse cursor to solve (most of) the drag issues.
The filter Manager is really fast, but it can be a problem with some applications.

Any suggestions on a VNC client for Android phone/tablet to connect to RO?