Installation

vncdotool is available on PyPI, so in most cases you should be able to simply run:

pip install vncdotool

vncdotool relies on a number of libraries, the two major ones are PIL, the Python Imaging Library and Twisted, an asynchronous networking library. While vncdotool should work with any recent version of these libraries sometimes things break. If you are having issues getting things to work you can try using a stable set of libraries and if you aren’t already using it, and you should be, use a virtualenv.:

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv venv-vncdotool
# XXX requirements.txt from vncdotool source tree
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .

Windows

If you are not familiar with Python, the most reliable way to install vncdotool is to use binary packages.

  1. Download Python, current 64-bit Windows Version, from Official Python website https://www.python.org/downloads/

  2. Start the installation > On the first screen of the installer…

    • Check the box for “Add Python to PATH”,

    • Any other check boxes can be left checked or unchecked per their default

    • Click “Customize installation”

    • On the Optional Features install page, no changes are needed

    • On the Advanced Options page…

      • Make sure the boxes for “Install for all users” and “Add Python to environment variables” are checked

      • Uncheck “Precompile standard library” unless needed for other projects

      • Any other check boxes can be left checked or unchecked per their default

    • Click “Install” at the bottom

  3. Open an elevated Windows PowerShell console:

    • Type “PowerShell” (without quotes) in the search field of the Windows taskbar

    • Click “Run as administrator” in the right pane above the search field

    • Type or paste each of the following lines below, pressing Enter after each line and waiting for each line to process (change “Python39” to different version as applicable):

      [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "$env:Path;C:\Program Files\Python39\;C:\Program Files\Python39\Scripts\", "User")
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install vncdotool

  4. At a Powershell prompt:

    vncdo.exe --server som.eip.add.res type "Hello World"

  5. If Hello World shows up on the remote machine that has a VNC server running then its time to celebrate. Otherwise, first check you can connect from your local machine to the remote using a normal GUI VNC Client. Once you get the normal GUI client working try vncdotool again and if you still have problems try the community at _Stackoverflow.