Setting up VNC on a VPS (over SSH)

VPS-VNC-setup.md

Purpose

The purpose of this gist is to document the setup of a VNC server to allow remote desktop access on my development VPS.

Motivation

There are some chome extensions (e.g. webscrapers) that I would like to run from a VPS. This way the connection quality of my present location isn't a factor.

Steps

I'm using this guide.

1. Add your user to the sudo Group by logging in as root and running:

usermod -aG sudo username

2. Login as your user
3. Update

sudo apt update

4. Install xfce 4

sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies

5. Install tightVNC server

sudo apt install tightvncserver

6. Start VNC

vncserver

7. Enter a password (not view only since we want to control this machine).

Password: 
Verify:   
Would you like to enter a view-only password (y/n)? n
xauth:  file /home/natecostello/.Xauthority does not exist

New 'X' desktop is dev-vps:1

Creating default startup script /home/natecostello/.vnc/xstartup
Starting applications specified in /home/natecostello/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/natecostello/.vnc/dev-vps:1.log

8. Kill the server

vncserver -kill :1

9. Backup the xstartup file

mv ~/.vnc/xstartup ~/.vnc/xstartup.bak

10. Open a new startup file

nano ~/.vnc/xstartup

11. Add the following to the new file:

#!/bin/bash
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
startxfce4 &

12. Make the new file executable

chmod +x ~/.vnc/xstartup

13. Restart the vnc server

vncserver -localhost

Note: The -localhost option causes VNC to only allow connections that originate from the server itself.

14. Create an SSH connection on your local machine that forwards to the localhost connection for VNC

ssh -L 59000:localhost:5901 -C -N -l natecostello dev-vps

The guide at the top gives a good breakdown of this command: Here’s what this ssh command’s options mean:

-L 59000:localhost:5901: The -L switch specifies that the given port on the local computer (59000) is to be forwarded to the given host and port on the destination server (localhost:5901, meaning port 5901 on the destination server, defined as your_server_ip). Note that the local port you specify is somewhat arbitrary; as long as the port isn’t already bound to another service, you can use it as the forwarding port for your tunnel. -C: This flag enables compression which can help minimize resource consumption and speed things up. -N: This option tells ssh that you don’t want to execute any remote commands. This setting is useful when you just want to forward ports. -l natecostello dev-vps: The -l switch let’s you specify the user you want to log in as once you connect to the server.

15. Use a VNC Client (the mac native screen sharing app) to connect to localhost:59000

16. Enter the password you chose in step 7.

Boom! In the future just repeat steps 14-16 to connect.

Afterward

As is, this setup requires restarting vncserver after every boot of the dev-vps (pretty much every use). To fix that we proceeded with step 4 of the linked guide to set up VNC as a system service.

17. Create a file as follows:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@.service

18. Edit it as follows:

[Unit]
Description=Start TightVNC server at startup
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
User=natecostello
Group=natecostello
WorkingDirectory=/home/natecostello

PIDFile=/home/natecostello/.vnc/%H:%i.pid
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :%i > /dev/null 2>&1
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vncserver -depth 24 -geometry 1280x800 -localhost :%i
ExecStop=/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :%i

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

18. Run the following commands (detail for what they do are in the linked guide).

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable vncserver@1.service
vncserver -kill :1
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@.service