vncdotool

vncdotool allows you to interact with VNC servers directly from the command-line.

Currently under developement, so use at your own peril but what is the worst that could happen?

Quick Start

If you have a VNC server running you can quickly try out vncdotool by running:

python vncdotool/command.py -h hostaddr -d displaynum click 2

Which for most window managers will open a context menu at the top left corner of the screen. If you have PIL installed then you can do screen captures too:

python vncdotool/command.py -h hostaddr -d displaynum capture screen.png

Install:

You will need to have Twisted installed, http://twistedmatrix.com. Optionally, you will also need the Python Imaging Library, http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/. Once you have the dependencies installed you can install vncdotool from source with:

python setup.py install

Usage:

Once installed you can use the vncdotool command to send keys, for alphanumeric you just specify the character. For other keys names are used:

vncdotool key a
vncdotool key 5
vncdotool key .
vncdotool key enter
vncdotool key shift-a
vncdotool key ctrl-C
vncdotool key ctrl-alt-del

To enter data you can use the type command, which only supports alphanumeric:

vncdotool type hello

You can also control the mouse pointer with move and click:

vncdotool move 100 100
vncdotool click 1

If you have the Python Imaging Library (PIL) installed you can also make screen captures of the session:

vncdotool capture screenshot.png

Again if you have PIL, you can wait for the screen to match a known image. This is useful for waiting for the server to be in a known state:

vncdotool expect somescreen.png 0

Finally, you may specify multiple actions on a single command line:

vncdotool type username key enter expect password_prompt.png
vncdotool type password move 100 150 click 1 expect welcome_screen.png

Requirements:

• Python