Setting up a VNC Server

A Virtual Network Computing (VNC) server is a valuable (but often slow and painful) way of remotely viewing graphical content. On occasion you may need to work on a remote virtual machine and perform a task that is not possible via SSH alone. I would occasionally have to open an event viewer for very large particle interaction files during my PhD in order to identify files to download and perform further analysis on. Using a VNC server saved a great deal of time and bandwidth.

• To configure the VNC server we will need two terminals open.
  • Terminal 1 = Terminal logged in to a virtual machine.
  • Terminal 2 = Terminal on your local machine.
• Terminal 1: Start the VNC server. Replace X with a number from 0 to 99 which must be different for everyone working on the same VM.

vncserver :X -localhost

• Terminal 1: Choose a password for accessing the server.
• Terminal 1: Push the output of a remote terminal to the VNC desktop.

export DISPLAY=localhost:X

• Terminal 2: Tunnel the VNC through SSH to keep it encrypted. If X is less than 10 add a zero to the front. The -N flag means that a remote command won't be executed as we are just forwarding ports and -f sends ssh to the background.

ssh -L 59X:localhost:59X -N -f -l < username > < vmaddress >

• Terminal 2: Open the window locally.
  • On linux/ubuntu we will use vinagre but you might need to download it first with sudo apt-get install vinagre.
  • On mac the command is open.

vinagre vnc://localhost:59X

At this point you should see the desktop of the remote machine pop up, it should capture your mouse automatically so you can click around to explore.