My Temporary Band-Aid

As with many other users of the wonderful Remote Desktop feature, I was afflicted with the broken refresh while 3D effects are enabled on the host computer. This is a problem that began when Ubuntu 9.04 was released. Basically, when logging in to the host computer remotely, Vino decides that it does not want to refresh the screen because 3D effects are enabled. If 3D effects are disabled, the screen refresh will start working normally. I'm sure that there is a lot more involved with this that I don't completely understand, but I know that it's been quite annoying for me.

Honestly, it should have been fixed by now, but I digress...

For the entire time that I was using Jaunty and for a few weeks into the release of Karmic, I didn't know what to do. Then I finally did a Google search that produced an amazing result! Here is the temporary "band-aid" that I discovered..

On the host computer...

Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor

If you don't have the Configuration Editor installed, do a simple

sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

Once the Configuration Editor is open you will need to navigate to

desktop > gnome > remote_access

From here, the check box called disable_xdamage needs to be checked. After that you will be able to remotely access the host computer with refresh.

Happy Remote Accessing!