Some VNC servers use various accelerator commands, rather than just sending pixels, to reduce bandwidth. There is some rectangle copy function that Chicken of the VNC (2.0b4) can't handle. I can reproduce it every time like this:
(1) Set up qemu-kvm (v0.11.1) on a Linux box
(2) Configure the display to use VNC mode
(3) Install Ubuntu (the latest version... 9.10?)
(4) Open a terminal on an otherwise default desktop
(5) Drag the window around
Observed behavior:
Chicken immediately stops accepting commands from the VNC server. The mouse pointer works, and it appears that mouse and keyboard events are being sent to the server. But no updates appear on the screen. If I close the connection and reconnect, it's fine again until I try to drag the window.
Note that this isn't a bad command from the server. JollysfastVNC handles it just fine. Unfortunately, that client isn't quite as nice as Chicken.