GUI for EC2 Guide

GUI for EC2 Guide

This guide will go over how to use a GUI with an Amazon Linux EC2 instance. See this guide for details:

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-linux-2-install-gui/

Install TigerVNC on Your Local Machine

Visit the TigerVNC website for detailed installation instructions. For Mac OS go look for the following:

TigerVNC-1.12.0.dmg

Install MATE on Your EC2

MATE is a lightweight GUI based on GNOME 2 available as an extra for Amazon Linux 2.

1. Install MATE packages.

   sudo amazon-linux-extras install mate-desktop1.x
   

2. Define MATE as your default desktop for all users.

   sudo bash -c 'echo PREFERRED=/usr/bin/mate-session > /etc/sysconfig/desktop'
   

Install and Setup TigerVNC on Your EC2

TigerVNC will allow us to access EC2 via a GUI.

1. Install TigerVNC.

   sudo yum install tigervnc-server
   

2. Restrict VNC access to the local host so that VNC can only be accessed through a tunnel.

   sudo mkdir /etc/tigervnc
   sudo bash -c 'echo localhost > /etc/tigervnc/vncserver-config-mandatory'
   

Start TigerVNC

Start TigerVNC on display 1 so that the service starts automatically at boot time.

1. Copy from the vncserver template from TigerVNC to your system:

   sudo cp /lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@.service
   

2. Replace any occurrences of user with ec2-user using the following command:

   sudo sed -i 's/<USER>/ec2-user/' /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@.service
   

3. Reload the systemctl.

   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   

4. Enable and start the service.

   sudo systemctl enable vncserver@:1
   sudo systemctl start vncserver@:1
   

5. Run vncserver. If it prompts you, setup a password for VNC and for view-only password press n for no.

   vncserver
   

Connecting to TigerVNC

1. Open a new connection to your EC2 instance and enable port forwarding.

   ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 -i /user/home/mykeys/ec2key-us-east-1.pem ec2-user@XX.XX.XX.XX
   

2. Open TigerVNC on your local machine and connect to the VNC server via:

   localhost:1
   

Additional Tools

What’s the point of having a UI if you don’t have a browser? To install Firefox use the following command:

sudo amazon-linux-extras install firefox

Result

Now you should be able to access the VNC server using an encrypted SSH tunnel and be able to use your GUI with your EC2 instance.