VNC to new Debian VM blanks after VM starts. VM is running fine.

[getontoit99]

Hi All.

I've recently built one Ubuntu (18.04) and two Debian (10.3) VMs on FreeNAS 11.3U1 (now upgraded to 11.2U2).

All VMs are booting and running fine and have SSH access, but VNC to the running Debian VMs shows only a blinking cursor and is unresponsive. The VM startup sequence shows in VNC and very briefly, the login prompt appears before VNC blanks. (See file VNC_Debian.jpg)

VNC to the Ubuntu VM works correctly. (VNC_Ubuntu.jpg)

The Debian VMs were built from debian-10.3.0-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso. They initially booted to the UEFI shell but were made to run by booting from boot/efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi (using information from this forum, thanks to all) and in the running VM, doing this:

mkdir -p /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT
cp /boot/efi/EFI/debian/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi

I'd like VNC to work as a back door in case I accidentally screw up networking in the VM.

Could anyone offer ideas on why VNC to the Debian VMs doesn't work after booting has completed?

Or, is there a better way to build the Debian VMs?

I'm not knowledgeable in Linux, if that's not obvious

Regards

Scott

 

[getontoit99]

Correction: FreeNAS 11.3U1 (now upgraded to 11.3U2).

 

[ernestr]

I experimented with a few different Debian-based distros and saw the same thing. With Xbuntu I could actually log in and then the mouse and keyboard would stop working and/or the screen would turn black. With Ubuntu Mate, after log in, the desktop would render but the mouse and keyboard were unresponsive. That Mate install was working fine last weekend. With vanilla Ubuntu I never got to the log in screen. Linux Mint (XFCE) seems to be working now for me.