GUI in Amazon EC2 Linux instance

Question

I would like to use Amazon EC2 but I need to know if an AMI with Linux distribution with GUI exists.

Answer 1

I don't know if it exits. But you can usually install a VNC server on any Linux installation, including existing AMIs. And then connect using a VNC client to get remote desktop.

Or use an NX server and client.

Or even plain X protocol, but this will be very slow.

Answer 2

You can install GNOME on LINUX AMI's for GUI. You can also make use of NOMACHINE for this. If you are making use of Ubuntu AMI's follow steps mentioned below :

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
sudo -E apt-get update
sudo -E apt-get install -y ubuntu-desktop

Answer 3

This works on RHEL 6.3 64-bit: (note: # means superuser and can be replaced by sudo)

# yum groupinstall "Desktop"    
# yum install tigervnc-server xorg-x11-fonts-Type1
# vncserver 
# chkconfig vncserver on

# vi /etc/sysconfig/vncservers 

Edit the last two lines, uncommenting them, where myuser is a created user (usually ec2-user).

VNCSERVERS="2:myuser"  
VNCSERVERARGS[2]="-geometry 1280x1024"

Save changes.

Edit iptables:

# vi /etc/iptables

Add this line:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5902 -j ACCEPT

Restart iptables:

# service iptables restart

Next, edit the xstartup file:

# vi /root/.vnc/xstartup

Make the last line be:

exec  gnome-session

To finish:

• Reboot the instance (to reset your vncserver services)
• Ensure the amazon security group allows tcp 5902 traffic
• Launch a VNC Viewer such as RealVNC's on your local computer
• Connect to public_ip:5902

Answer 4

You can check out the post here if you are interested in using Freenx to connect to an Amazon AMI using Fedora, CentOS, RHEL (or any other yum based distro).

Answer 5

Here are the instructions (thanks to Renan from AWS) I received May 2015.

1. Launch a new, or use an existing, Ubuntu instance. I used Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander, 64-bit.10:08:04 AM
2. Update the system package list:10:08:04 AM sudo apt-get update10:08:04 AM
3. Optional - I recommend upgrading all installed packages, even the kernel. There may be reasons not to want this, however:10:08:04 AM sudo apt-get dist-upgrade10:08:04 AM
4. Install LXDE and TightVNC (This will take a while, depending on the instance type):10:08:04 AM sudo apt-get install lxde tightvncserver10:08:04 AM
5. Reboot the system:10:08:04 AM sudo reboot10:08:04 AM
6. Start up a VNC server (on localhost - since VNC itself isn't very secure, we'll use SSH)10:08:04 AM vncserver -geometry 1024x768 -depth 16 -localhost :110:08:04 AM Note: the VNC server will ask you to set and confirm a password. You will use this when you connect your VNC client.10:08:04 AM
7. Install a suitable VNC viewer, such as TightVNC on Windows: http://www.tightvnc.com/download.php 10:08:04 AM or Remmina on Linux (usually installed by default, or at least available in the repositories).10:08:04 AM Sorry, I'm not sure what Mac users install for VNC, but apparently there's a Java-based viewer at least: http://www.tightvnc.com/faq.php#macosx 10:08:04 AM
8. Create an SSH tunnel:10:08:04 AM ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 -N -f -i ubuntu@10:08:04 AM On Windows PuTTY, enter the usual settings (login, address, key file) then go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels and enter 5901 for Source Port and localhost:5901 for Destination, then click Add, and start your session.10:08:04 AM
9. Finally, launch your VNC viewer and connect to localhost:5901, then enter the VNC password you chose earlier.10:08:04 AM
10. Enjoy your encrypted, remote Linux GUI.