Fixing VNC gray-screen problem

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While trying to use VNC with an Xubuntu host (i.e., the machine running the VNC server), I could connect successfully but could only see the color gray and nothing else. The following change to the host's ~/.vnc/xstartup file fixed the problem.

1. Back up the original ~/.vnc/xstartup file.
2. Change the contents of ~/.vnc/xstartup to:

#!/bin/sh
unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
startxfce4 &

See more info about setting up a VNC server on Linux here.