Comments on How to turn your Ubuntu 14.10 headless server into a XFCE + VNC Network Desktop
This tutorial describes the installation of Gnome 3, XFCE and VNC on a headless server (server without monitor) to turn it into a Linux Desktop that you can access from anywhere over the internet with VNC. The server that is used for this setup is a root server in a datacenter that runs just a minimal Ubuntu 14.10 operating system.
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It ought to be possible to turn all of this into a script, and save lots of copying an pasting.
VNC doesn't encrypt anything. Using that over the internet without discussion about using a VPN or ssh tunnel is gross negligence, IMHO.
There are other options that behave faster and use ssh tunnels by default. NX protocol is one of those. x2go-server or freeNX are implementations. They work over the same ssh port you've already opened and desktop performances feels 2-3x faster than VNC or RDP.
I'm confused by VNC still gets any press for internet use. These flaws in the protocol are well known.
I've added a warning note to use a VPN if this setup is used for connections over public networks.
Why does it say Gnome 3 but the end result is an Xfce desktop?
"you can access from anywhere over the internet"
Where is the router configuration information. hole in your firewall, redirected to certain fixed IP in your internal net, etc. Actually its a good thing that this open access description doesn't provide that information because I agree with JohnP that this is a negligent security setup.
Hello, the idea here is to show how to make gnome 3 and VNC work on ubuntu 14.10 and to other guys want to learn about this, then its simple shows to basic knowledge about this part. So, if we are thingking about securing, yes i agree also, that this procedure should include the security flaws. But for now, we want to show how this make it work.
This is intented for beginner of linux on how to install gnome and vnc.
We can install any package other than xfce or gnome, the idea here is to make it work on ubuntu 14.10.
VNC is harder to get working than x2go. It just is. It is like saying we should all still be using telnet or plain ftp instead of ssh, scp, sftp or sshfs ...
x2go is F/LOSS, secure, works better than VNC, plus can use ssh-keys - why show how-to for inferior tools?
apt-get install x2goserver (on the server)
apt-get install x2goclient (on the client)
Use a non-3D desktop, point the client at the server (hopefully using configured ssh keys), and be happy.
/etc/init.d/vncserver start
Starting VNC server: 1:myuser Password:
asking for myuser's password
This worked fantastically well. I didn't need to use the Gnome PPA seems Ubuntu Precise already has the required features. Also I am passing it through my SSH connection. If i didn't my default firewall would block it anyway. I prefer VNC because its easy to find on android and windows devices so I can literally get access to my VPS from anywhere and there are no side effects from a network failure, I just reconnect. I use a Java application with a security mechanism that requires me to see the screen to login. after that I can use the command line for everything else. This really helped me a lot.
Why not NX instead of VNC? It does encryption via SSH, and it's faster than VNC.
why is it that we on gnu/linux systems are having such a crap way of getting remote gui access? I mean, windows have always had "splendid" rdp support. We're a unix community; why are we having to go through all this crap? This should've been standard on all gnu systems
I have a question recarding the theme. When I use this method, I am able to xfce and it loades fine but the theme and icons does not load at all. Also another issue that I notice, command tab complition is not working in the terminal. I have the same xstartup as you. I have to note here that the vncserver is started as root and the OS Im using is Kali 2.0.
Great tutorial. Thank you
One small detail.. set the password by entering 'vncpasswd' just after running vncserver.