Setting Up A VNC Sever
There have been some questions about how to set up a VNC server and access it
from home so I put together a little tutorial....
- The first thing you need to do is start your own instance of a VNC server.
To do this, ssh to the machine you want to run the server on (ie the machine
you want to be running your bomb on like sunfire31, or 32). Type 'vncserver'
in the terminal. You should get something like the following back:
sunfire31{mpelle03}51: vncserver
New 'sunfire31:6 (mpelle03)' desktop is sunfire31:6
Starting applications specified in /h/mpelle03/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /h/mpelle03/.vnc/sunfire31:6.log
There is a very important piece of information here. sunfire31:6
This means that your vnc server is running on sunfire31 as server
number 6. This most likely means that 5 other people have servers running on
this machine.
- If you are inside the firewall, you can simply open you vnc viewer
(like tightvnc) and put in sunfire31:6 as the address of the server.
Put in the password you selected when you started the server, and your all set.
- If you want to connect from home, its a little more difficult, but still
can be done. You need to open an SSH tunnel that allows your vnc viewer at
home to access the vnc server inside the halligan firewall. In your ssh
client, there should be a section for SSH tunnels. I use PuTTY. In the
connection config dialog, in the left pane, go to connection->SSH->Tunnels.
This is where you need to enter the port forwading information.
- You need to determine which source port and which destination port you
need to associate. VNC works starting at port 5900. Meaning that if you
have a server running as #6 (as I do above) it will be listening on port
5906. In the destination box, enter sunfire31:5906 (or whichever
machine you started the server on, with the appropriate port for the number
host you are).
- The source port is the port on your local machine that will be associated
with the destiantion port. Here you can enter 5901. This means that after you
open the SSH tunnel, it will be as if sunfire31:5906 is on
localhost:5901. If you want to have more than one vnc connection
forwarded, you can set up multiple forwards using 5902, 5903, etc as the
source ports for the other connections.
- Make sure you click add, to actually add the forwarded port. Also, you
probably want to go back to the session options and save your configuration so
you dont have to enter it every time.
- Restart your SSH connection. Now that localhost:5901 is connected to the
port your VNC server is listening on, you can start your VNC viewer and enter
localhost:1 as the address of the server. (remember host 1
makes the viewer try to connect on 5901)
- It works!
Another thing to remember is that your vnc server keeps running even
if you close your ssh connection. You must explicitly kill it. To do this
ssh to the machine you started it on and type vncserver -kill :6
(replace the 6 with the actual number of your host).
You can also man vncserver to find all kinds of other options you can
do such as set the desktop size.