Desktop (GUI) mode for Ubuntu 16.04 on AWS EC2

desktop-mode-ubuntu-aws-ec2.markdown

Ubuntu 16.04 on AWS EC2

This guide enables desktop mode in Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) running off an AWS EC2.

Setup

• Launch an EC2 instance with Ubuntu 16.04 (should work on all versions greater too)
• Ensure a security group is configured, that allows ingress on ports 22 (SSH) and 5901 (VNC, 5900+N, where N is the display number)
• SSH into the instance, update the system, install the XFCE desktop and the lightweight VNC server:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies tightvncserver

• Now, initialize. Assign a password to login in via remote desktop. Finally, kill VNC server.

vncserver
vncserver -kill :1

• To reconfigure VNC:

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

• Add in the following to the xstartup config.

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

• Make xstartup an executable script and start the VNC server

sudo chmod +x ~/.vnc/xstartup
vncserver

Connecting to the instance

Once setup is complete, you can remote desktop into your instance with GUI.

• On OS X, use screen sharing

vnc://<instance_ip>:5901

• On Linux, use krdc, remmima etc

References

• [EC2-VNC] (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2-VNC)
• [How to Install and Configure VNC on Ubuntu 16.04] (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-vnc-on-ubuntu-16-04)

This simply works on my Lightsail ec2 instances too. Thanks for sharing.

@benjaminv much thanks. My initial setup was on LightSail too, but needed a tighter knit setup with other vpc services, hence the switch.

For my particular Lightsail instance, I ran into the following error re: dbus-launch after connecting with VNC. To resolve it, I installed dbus:

sudo apt install dbus-x11

Also, note that dbus-x11 has to be installed before vncserver is started, if you're going through this the first time.

OS details:

cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="11"
VERSION="11 (bullseye)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

This was on a node.js template on AWS Lightsail.

For my particular Lightsail instance, I ran into the following error re: dbus-launch after connecting with VNC. To resolve it, I installed dbus:

sudo apt install dbus-x11

Noted. Could you share OS version details?

For my particular Lightsail instance, I ran into the following error re: dbus-launch after connecting with VNC. To resolve it, I installed dbus:

sudo apt install dbus-x11

Noted. Could you share OS version details?

Sure, I edited my comment to include details.