How To Install VNC Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

VNC (Virtual Network Computing) server is a free and open source software which is designed for allowing remote access to the Desktop Environment of the server to the VNC Client whereas VNC viewer is used on remote computer to connect to the server .

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation VNC Server on an Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver server.

Install VNC Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
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<strong> Step 2. Installing VNC Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.</strong>

First, type the following command to install Xfce on your server:
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sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies xorg dbus-x11 x11-xserver-utils

Next, install TigerVNC on your Ubuntu server:

sudo apt install tigervnc-standalone-server tigervnc-common

Once installed the next step is to run the vncserver command which will create the initial configuration and set up the password:

vncserver

Result:

You will require a password to access your desktops.

Password:
Verify:
Would you like to enter a view-only password (y/n)? n
/usr/bin/xauth:  file /home/chedelics/.Xauthority does not exist

New 'server2.wpcademy.com:1 (chedelics)' desktop at :1 on machine server2.wpcademy.com
Starting applications specified in /etc/X11/Xvnc-session
Log file is /home/chedelics/.vnc/server2.wpcademy.com:1.log

Use xtigervncviewer -SecurityTypes VncAuth -passwd /home/chedelics/.vnc/passwd :1 to connect to the VNC server.

After VNC Server started and created some of it’s files. We are now can turn it off to modify the xstartup file (startup script) to make it start with xfce4:

vncserver -kill :1
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<strong> Step 3. Configuring VNC Server. </strong>

First, create the following file:
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~/.vnc/xstartup

Add following files:

#!/bin/sh
unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
exec startxfce4

Next, Run the following command to make sure permissions are correct:

chmod u+x ~/.vnc/xstartup

Step 4. Creating a Systemd unit file.

The next step is to create VNC Server statup script:

/etc/systemd/system/[email protected]

Add following files:

[Unit]
Description=Remote desktop service (VNC)
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=chedelics
PAMName=login
PIDFile=/home/%u/.vnc/%H%i.pid
ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :%i > /dev/null 2>&1 || :'
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vncserver :%i -geometry 1440x900 -alwaysshared -fg
ExecStop=/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :%i

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WantedBy=multi-user.target

The next step is to enable the unit file with the following command:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable [email protected]
sudo systemctl start [email protected]

Step 4. Connecting to VNC server.

To access remote desktop on vnc server from windows system, you must have vnc viewer installed on your system. There are various vnc viewer available to use. Download any one and install on your system, for example:

TightVNC
RealVNC
TigerVNC

tightvnc-connection

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed VNC Server. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing VNC Server on your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official VNC web site.

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