Recording your screen in solaris :)

Posted by Harishankaran (sp2hari)

Recording your screen in Solaris works right out of the box. All you need to install is vncserver and vnc2swf.

A simple HOW TO about recording your screen in Solaris. :)

First you need to install Vncserver. Solaris by default doesn't come with a VNC. The easiest way to install VNC is through pkg-get

root@home# pkg-get -i vncserver

Before running that command, configure your pkg-get to get the packages from blastwave.org. Check http://www.blastwave.org/howto.html to get more details about setting up the repo.

That should install vncserver. :)

Next step it to install vnc2swf.
Download the C version of vnc2swf from http://www.unixuser.org/%7Eeuske/vnc2swf/index.html.
Extract the tar ball

hari@home:~$cd vnc2swf
hari@home:~$./configure
hari@home:~$make
root@home#make install

The commands mentioned above will install vnc2swf . :)

All you need to do to use vnc2swf is to start a vncserver. vnc2swf just needs the output file name to be passed as command line argument when started. Pressing F8 gives the options to start, stop, pause and clear the reocrding.

Some of the issues i faced are :)

1. When the same user tries to start a gnome-session in the vnc, an error message saying gnome-session is already running is given. So the best bet is to create a new user and start the vncserver of that user.

2. The icons are not displayed properly if you login into the new user's account using GNOME. Use Common Desktop Environment (CDE) to login and start a vncserver.

3. By default, the new user won't have a .vnc folder. So start a vnc and kill that. Now you will have .vnc folder with a xstartup file. Modify the file so that gnome-session runs in the vnc instead of the default twm. The xstartup file should look like

#!/bin/sh

/usr/openwin/bin/xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
/usr/openwin/bin/xsetroot -solid grey
/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
#/usr/openwin/bin/twm &
gnome-session &


And yeah, what i recorded can be viewed at http://download.freedesktop.org/ldtp/movies/screen2.html. Nice right ;-)