Problems with option -timeout

[rdiez]

I recently wrote the following script to help unskilled users connect to my listening VNC client:

https://github.com/rdiez/Tools/tree/master/VNC

I am using x11vnc version "x11vnc: 0.9.13 lastmod: 2011-08-10", which is what comes with Xubuntu.

I have discovered a few issues with x11vnc's -timeout option that I have documented in the script's comments. I'll describe them here again:

1 - If the remote IP address does exist, but drops all packets, x11vnc will wait for too long.

This is actually not an issue with -timeout itself. I wonder where the very long connection timeout comes from, and how to change it. This should probably be separate socket option, and not a global -timeout setting for the whole connection procedure.

2 - The timeout specified with -timeout can trigger when the user is being prompted by "-accept popup:0", which probably should not happen. If the timeout triggers while the user is being prompted, x11vnc freezes in such a way, that only SIGKILL will close it.

3 - If the timeout triggers, x11vnc does not exit with a non-zero exit code. Therefore, the calling script has no way to know whether the connection succeeded or not.