How to specify VNC port number with Mac OS X built-in VNC client?

Question

Is it possible to specify VNC port number in built-in VNC client of Mac OS X?

I'm trying to connect to Xen VPS machine with Finder's built-in VNC client. I used address like this.

vnc://server:port

But it fails because it uses another port, and Finder's built-in VNC cannot handle port number. As I know it handles the number after colon as display-number, not a port number. Is there a way to specify port number on the VNC client?

Or any workaround for this? (port forwarding??? I have no idea about it...)

Answer 1

Open a terminal window and type in:

open vnc://server:5900

Or try 5901 if it is on that port number.

Answer 2

A VNC display number is just another way of specifying a port. Display 0 is, by convention, port 5900; display 1 port 5901 and so on, so if the port your server is using is close to 5900, you can simply subtract 5900 and use that as the display number.

Contrary to what you say, Mac OS X's screen sharing client does accept port numbers with a vnc://server:port url. Either use open from the terminal as Michael Dillon suggests, or select "Connect to Server..." from the Finder's "Go" menu, and type the address in.

Finally if that won't work, it may be that your VNC client and server are incompatible - the Mac OS X VNC server is certainly a bit idiosyncratic. Try downloading a different VNC client such as Chicken of the VNC. If that doesn't work, you'll know that it's not client issues and could be something like a firewall getting in your way.