autostarting VNC and gnome desktop...

howdy,

i am looking to admin my linux box remotely after a reboot but i am having several issues. i chose VNC as it's platform independent and my admin platform is win2k. i am using the the vendor release of redhat 7.1 with a workstation class install with some server apps adding in. issues it appears i am having:

starting vnc server requires a password to be input each time you start it. i haven't been able to determine if there is a passable command line parameter that can take care of this yet. there is a vncpassword executable that handles this but it's not clear if i can script it's use.

viewer session only seem to work after i have logged into the box which won't work of course if the box is remote.

vnc only seems to work against a command line style xterm session but i woulld like to apply it to the gnome desktop that starts automatically when i log into the box.

an unrelated problem - i would rather log into the box and have a command line interface start instead of gnome. would prefer to start gnome as needed. i think during the setup i inadvertently chose gnome as the default and the documnetation doesn't explain how to back this out.

i am interested in hearing from anyone who may have or are having these types of issues (remote administration and auto start gnome/KDE). i'm kind of new to linux and this is my attempt to get started. i use unix in the workplace so i am familiar with basic commands and file structure, etc.

thank you in advance....steve

cant help you with the VNS business but you can edit

/etc/inittab to change

id:5:initdefault:

to

id:3:initdefault:

and that will default your booting to renlevel 3 (no X) and from the command line you can type startx to do just that, start X