Problems while installing Gnome on Proxmox VE 8.1.4

[shookti]

Hello, I am trying to get gnome desktop manager running on one of the servers.

I performed these steps:
1) apt install task-gnome-desktop
2) systemctl set-default graphical.target
3) commented out the line 'auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet_success' in the file /etc/pam.d/gdm-password
4) rebooted

These steps were taken from here: https://vpsie.com/knowledge-base/how-to-install-gui-on-debian/

When I check the statuses of the gdm.service and gdm3.service services, it says that the service is active with no apparent errors. However, when I remotely access the BMC livestream (a duplicate of whatever is output to a monitor if one is connected, accessed by entering the IPMI IP address into the address bar in a browser), there is no GUI based login screen and I just see a black screen.

I know that X11 is working because when I ssh into the server (using ssh user@server1 -X) with X windows forwarding enabled, I can forward GUIs (not any arbitrary GUI, for some reason only nautilus works, running 'evince' does not work) I open on the server to my laptop.

VNC-ing into the computer also doesn't work. I have installed tightvnc, and start the vnc server by running the command 'vncserver'. When I open the VNC client on a remote desktop it just shows a grey screen with nothing on it.

I am running Proxmox VE 8.1.4, CPU: AMD EPYC 7662, GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, Memory: 128636MiB

Any idea what might be going wrong?

 

[Nuke Bloodaxe]

I'm wondering if you might have had an easier time doing this: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_12_Bookworm

Reference for GDM (for quick lookups): https://wiki.debian.org/GDM

Could you attach the logs for the X server? It'd be useful to see what it is doing, and how/where it is displaying.

With that VNC session, can you see the mouse pointer, and is it an X? [Just thinking back, when setting up vnc servers I had to say which display manager was to be used, and it would also provide the display number that would be used.]

An example [plasma, sorry] from my xstartup file included in my .vnc folder for a user:

#!/bin/sh
exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
export DESKTOP_SESSION=plasma
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
vncconfig -iconic &
dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11 &

With a vnc server, you should also have session logs in the .vnc folder , these should help with diagnosis.

Now, back to your ssh X11 forwarding, It'll allow you to forward applications, but desktops require special handling, see the following for a hint (best answer, method 3):
https://unix.stackexchange.com/ques...re-desktop-over-ssh-without-third-party-tools