Remote into Desktop on Ubuntu through SSH

Question

So we have SSH access to a Ubuntu server, and we need to setup some programs that require visual access, but we have no clue how to do this through SSH.

First, the Ubuntu server does not have a GUI be default. If Ubuntu desktop is installed, see How to setup x11vnc to access with graphical login screen for Ubuntu 18.04 and above also see Ubuntu 18.04 LTS x11vnc no longer works x11vnc can be used through a ssh tunnel. — user68186, Feb 20 '19 at 14:49

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

If the Ubuntu server has X11 server running (you can check it with echo $DISPLAY, it should return non-empty string on success), you can forward X11 by using

ssh -X me@remote-host

After logging in to the remote host, windows for visual programs launched there should appear as if they were launched locally.

If X11 server is not installed in the remote machine, you can install it, i.e. you can refer to the thread here:

How to install X11/xorg?

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 20 '19 at 14:08

0

Consider using X2Go. It's basically the Teamviewer of the Linux world. It has clients that work on Windows as well. I use it to connect to all of my Linux servers. I strongly suggest configuring it to use the xfce4 desktop.

edited Feb 20 '19 at 14:08

Melebius

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answered Feb 20 '19 at 13:19

Kreezxil

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Remote into Desktop on Ubuntu through SSH

2 Answers2