[Bug] Default VNC/RDP not work (errors in documentation)

[red7nikotin]

Description

Incorrect instructions in the documentation. It is not possible to configure and connect to the GUI desktop, which is deployed on the most default virtual machine of Podroid itself

Steps to Reproduce

1. Downloaded and installed Podroid on my smartphone
2. I launched it with all the default settings
3. The VM started immediately without any problems.
4. The terminal works and SSH works too
5. I connected via SSH and began to install the desktop GUI from the documentation (there are 2 options - this is bad!!!)
6. The GUI desktop itself was installed and started, I can switch on the smartphone itself to the terminal and to the GUI desktop
7. It is not clear what to do next, which package to install VNC or RDP, which ports to forward? (I tried different ways and nothing worked, and in the documentation of this project there is no clear and unambiguous complete sequence of all commands, there is no example)

Expected Behavior

I should have seen the Linux desktop GUI

Actual Behavior

Nothing. there is no connection from any of my multiple PCs on the network

Additional Context

I installed lxqt, but then I tried xfce, but the result is the same - the remote connection does not work.
There is one big problem and I will describe it separately as a bug later, which is related to ip addresses.
The documentation has a clear and unambiguous example of running containers with PiHole, Gitea, VS Code, but why is there not the same clear and unambiguous example of installation and gender?

[ExTV]

You are right that the documentation was missing something important, and it was not a small gap. Thanks for pushing on it.

Why nothing you tried could have worked

You did not do anything wrong. The desktop you installed was almost certainly running correctly the whole time.

The X session inside the VM runs with no password. To keep that from becoming an open desktop for anyone on your network, Podroid forwards VNC port 5900 to 127.0.0.1 on the phone only. Nothing outside the phone can reach it. That is why every attempt from every PC failed the same way, regardless of whether you used LXQt or Xfce, and regardless of which port you tried to forward: ports 5900 and 4713 are reserved, so a rule on them is refused rather than applied.

None of that was written down anywhere. From the outside it looks exactly like a broken feature, so the bug report is fair.

The short answer

If you only want to see the desktop, you do not need VNC, RDP, or any port forwarding at all. Install a desktop, start it, and tap the monitor icon in the terminal's top bar. Podroid has a built-in viewer already wired to the X server in the VM:

# apk add xfce4 xfce4-terminal
# startxfce4 &

That is the complete sequence. There is no server to install and no port to forward.

To reach it from your PCs

Use an SSH tunnel. It carries the desktop over the SSH connection you already have working, so it needs no extra forwarding rule, and it is encrypted. Run this on the PC:

ssh -p 9922 -L 5900:127.0.0.1:5900 root@<phone-address>

Leave it connected, then point any VNC client at localhost:5900.

If you would rather expose it directly, forward a host port other than 5900 (for example 5901) to guest port 5900 and connect to phone-address:5901. Understand the tradeoff: the session has no password, so anyone on that network can open your desktop. On a network you do not fully control, use the tunnel.

About the two installation options

Your criticism is fair. The page offered setup-desktop and a manual path without saying which to use, and then never showed either one through to a working desktop. It now leads with a single start-to-finish example.

What changed

The desktop documentation now has:

• A complete Xfce example, every command in order, from a freshly booted VM.
• A "Connecting from another computer" section explaining the loopback binding, why it exists, and the SSH tunnel recipe.
• The direct-forward alternative with an explicit warning about the unauthenticated session.

One thing worth connecting to your other report: your address confusion made this considerably harder, because the address the app displayed was not necessarily one your PC could reach. That is fixed too, and the Status screen now lists every address the phone is reachable on. See #53.

I am leaving this open until the updated documentation is published. If you try the tunnel in the meantime, I would like to know whether it gets you there.