As is often the case, I am posting this here just as much for myself as I am for others Googling this problem…
Sometimes Vino-Server on Ubuntu can be flaky, preventing me from logging in, even though it is showing as running. I recently stumbled onto a helpful thread at UbuntuForums that assisted me…
Using the following, you should be able to get Vino back to behaving…
you@machine-name:~$ export DISPLAY=:0.0
you@machine-name:~$ /usr/lib/vino/vino-server &
I find this particularly useful when I am able to SSH in, but can’t VNC…
Hope this helps someone!
-Matt
No Savant Here, Folks - Just An Idiot. 
4 comments
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May 16, 2011 at 5:16 pm
jamie st.
Hi Matt,
Thanks this is useful.
I have had problems using vino where I am not able to connect to only one machine on the network. It sorted itself out after a few hours but I was wondering if stopping and then restarting the vino service would help me out if perhaps the process got hung up. If so how would I go about stopping the service? is it just service vino-server stop followed by your command above to start?
Thankyou
Jamie
May 16, 2011 at 5:18 pm
jamie st.
Sorry I should have said I can still ssh into the machine but not vnc.
Cheers
September 15, 2011 at 4:03 am
W3ird_N3rd
That starts vino, but for some reason it doesn’ t accept my password this way. Maybe this works if you don’t use a password.
June 4, 2012 at 10:36 pm
arvin aviles (@arvinaviles)
It was very useful for me, Thank You!