Skip to main content

Ubuntu desktop in the cloud accessible with VNC

To create a Ubuntu desktop on Amazon EC2 that can be accessed by VNC I did the following steps:

1. Create 64-bit Ubuntu server instance
2. Install ubuntu desktop:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

3. Install x11vnc

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

4. Install xvfb

sudo apt-get install xvfb

5. Configure x11vnc

sudo nano /etc/init/x11vnc.conf

 start on login-session-start  
 script  
 /usr/bin/x11vnc -xkb -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -noxrecord -noxfixes -noxdamage -rfbauth /etc/x11vnc.pass -forever -bg -rfbport 5900 -o /var/log/x11vnc.log  
 end script

And you should also set a password for your vnc sessions:
sudo x11vnc -storepasswd /etc/x11vnc.pass

6. Configure X server to use xvfb:

(Add the xserver-command line)

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
 [SeatDefaults]  
 greeter-session=unity-greeter  
 user-session=ubuntu  
 xserver-command=/etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc

(Replace the exec line)

sudo nano /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
 #!/bin/sh  
 #exec /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp "$@"  
 exec Xvfb :0 -screen 0 1280x1024x24

7. Reboot and then log in using ssh port-forwarding:

ssh -L5901:127.0.0.1:5900 -i mypem.pem ubuntu@someserver.compute.amazonaws.com

8. Connect with VNC using a vnc viewer to your local machine (127.0.0.1) port 5901


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using Angular i18n translation strings outside templates

As of today in Angular 6 i18n is only available in the templates. So what if we want to use translated messages programatically and outside templates? I still use the component template html file to declare the message to be translated, but by obtaining the TemplateRef ViewChild in the component typescript file I can get the translated messages from typescript. <ng-template #boardInvitationEmailBody let-organization="organization" let-url="url"> <ng-container i18n>You have been invited to join the board portal for</ng-container> {{organization}}. <ng-container i18n> Please follow the link to: </ng-container> {{url}} </ng-template> So in the typescript code i can now call the createEmailBodyTranlated text method to get the translated text for use outside the template. @ViewChild('boardInvitationEmailBody') boardInvitationEmailBody: TemplateRef ; createEmailBodyTranslatedText(org...
Post a Comment
Read more

Angular components not reloading on route change

Spent a long time wondering why route changes caused strange effects on my component, and found out that it was because my component wasn't reloading at all. I had this assumption that when a route parameter changed (e.g. /projects/1 changed to /projects/2 ) the component for the route would be reloaded. But this is not the default behaviour of the Angular router. The default behaviour of the Angular router is to reuse the route if the configuration is the same (and not reload the component). But we can override this by providing a RouteReuseStrategy to our @NgModule: providers: [ { provide: RouteReuseStrategy, useClass: AARouteReuseStrategy } ] The full custom implementation of the RouteReuseStrategy will then be like this (and it's the shouldReuseRoute method that changes the behaviour so that the component is reloaded on route parameter change): export class AARouteReuseStrategy extends RouteReuseStrategy { shouldDetach(route: ActivatedRou...
1 comment
Read more

Conflicting styles with multiple Angular apps in the same page

About two years ago I was gradually converting an old web app to modern Angular. At some point the app was in a state were the Angular components were embedded as multiple apps at different locations in the page. Very soon I found that one app got the css styling rules from the other, and that the APP_ID that was supposed to be present in the generated html/css (according to the docs:  https://angular.io/guide/component-styles#inspecting-generated-css ) was not there. I made a fix for this, and a pull request to Angular and am very happy now see that my fix for this is finally included here So now you should also be able to use Angular for creating multiple standalone widgets, adverts in any web page that is not made in Angular. That could be news sites, blogs, portals or anything. Angular just got new significant areas of use
Post a Comment
Read more