Red Hat :: VNC With RHEL 5.2 Server

I have seen and tried a lot of web information about issues with VNC and the RHEL 5.x implementation of VNC.

I can't seem to get the behavior I want. Let me explain.

With SLES 10, I can use YaST and with a few clicks end up with a system that when rebooted, accepts VNC viewer connections to :1 and displays the system login screen.

Here I can log in as root or any user. Once logged in, I can choose to use the command line to restart the system if necessary and eventually, I can reconnect with the vncviewer to the system login screen.

RHEL 5.2 has a "share your desktop" setting in preferences which works fine, but requires that I be logged in locally, which prevents remote restarts. There is also a system services dialog that refuses to start vncserver as a service. There are numerous tutorial in the RH knowledge base and the web that explain how to specifically setup individual displays, :1, :2 for specific users and claim that it can work after boot. I have not been able to get these working, but what I really want is a simpler, single display, :1, that will present the RHEL login screen so I can log in as any user I want. I am the only person accessing these servers and they are behind a firewall using secure protocols when remote.

I think Red Hat did not want to make this too easy as VNC users need to consider the security risks. Is there a way to get the SLES 10 VNC approach to work on RHEL 5?