The desktop page has never worked on a fresh install. Two faults, both fatal.
The password could never be created. DesktopView fetches /desktop/vnc-password
before opening the WebSocket, but ensureVncPassword ran only from startSession,
which only the WebSocket triggers — so the endpoint answered "not configured",
the UI stopped, and the socket that would have provisioned it was never opened.
A new vnc:ensure-password sidecar command provisions it directly; the endpoint
asks for it instead of returning 500.
The rfbauth file could never be written either. ensureVncPassword shelled out to
tigervnc's `vncpasswd -f`, which is not installed — and, contrary to the comment
in setup-desktop.sh, is not in tigervnc-common, which ships only tigervncconfig.
The failure was swallowed because only a zero exit wrote the file, so x11vnc got
-rfbauth pointing at nothing. x11vnc writes that format itself with -storepasswd,
so the dependency is gone and a failure now throws.
Verified on the box: the endpoint returns a password, .vnc/{passwd,password} are
written 0600, and the sidecar reports mirroring :0 on 5900 with x11vnc using the
generated rfbauth file.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
