nvidia jetson nano vnc connection without HDMI plugged in / headless

Question

When establishing a VNC connection the desktop is not rendered correctly at the client; showing graphical artifacts, furthermore some GUI apps won't start at all (e.g. terminal emulator).

I experienced this with the standard j4t image that should be installed to the jetson nano (in this case the 4GB dev edition).

The official tutorials for VNC setup do not provide a solution that works smoothly, so that one can start the Nano in headless mode (without HDMI device conncted). Though you actually can connect via VNC, it is still necessary to have a HDMI cable connected to the Nano's HDMI interface, so that the desktop loads correctly.

So what can we do to connect with VNC to the Jetson Nano running in headless mode and receive an artifact-free video stream; also with higher resolution and also where the UI does not show artifacts?

Answer 1

There is also a discussion on the official forums on this topic.

For the following version:

uname -a

Linux jetson 4.9.253-tegra #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Apr 20 14:25:12 PDT 2022 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

... this is what helped me:

• connect to the Jetson Nano via SSH

• install vncserver as well as viewer: sudo apt install tightvncserver && sudo apt install xtightvncviewer then run cmd vncserver and set a password

• also via SSH, edit the xstartup file:

sudo nano ~/.vnc/xstartup

• Add these 3 lines and save:

unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
startlxde &

• reboot the Jetson Nano and connect via SSH again, then start vncserver:

vncserver

• Finally connect to the mentioned display device, e.g. <hostname>:1. Connect via e.g. xtightvncviewer.