AWS EC2 Ubuntu Instance VNC access

- May 13, 2020

In this post I'll write about how to connect to your EC2 Ubuntu linux instance via VNC Viewer app. Let's get started......

Kindly login to your AWS instance via private key through terminal/putty as shown below and follow the steps from 1 to 8 to access your Ubuntu (18.x in my case) GUI from your local machine-
ssh -i your-aws-key.pem ubuntu@ec2-x-x-x-80.ap-south-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Step-1
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Step-2
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop gnome-panel gnome-settings-daemon metacity nautilus gnome-terminal xfce4 vnc4server

Step-3
vncserver

Enter the password- xxxx
Confirm Password- xxxx

Step-4
vi ~/.vnc/xstartup

Uncomment previous and use this one in xstartup file as shown below

#!/bin/sh
# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
unset SESSION_MANAGER
# exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
startxfce4 &
[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
gnome-panel &
gnome-settings-daemon &
metacity &
nautilus &
gnome-terminal

Step-5
Kill VNC session. It was the first session so the display ID would be 1.

vncserver -kill :<DISPLAY_ID>

vncserver -kill :1

Step-6
Optionally reboot your VM

Step-7
vncserver -geomeory 1340x750
<Provide VNC Password>

UPDATE: in case of error occurs due to -geometry parameter, start directly as-

vncserver

Step-8
Open SSH terminal/ putty and enter below command to connect to your EC2 instance
ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 -i your-aws-key.pem ubuntu@ec2-x-x-x-80.ap-south-1.compute.amazonaws.com

Make sure your was key file is at same location from where you execute command or provide absolute path to your key file in above line. So your-aws-key.pem will be /..path/your-aws-key.pem like location

Step-9
Now Open VNC Viewer App and enter the VNC password in prompt window.