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Install VNC Server on Alibaba Cloud centos7 for Graphical Access

MISCELLANEOUS

This article introduces how to use tigervnc-server and Server with GUI to access the graphical interface of Linux centos7. All operations were completed on Alibaba Cloud ECS with centos7 installed. Follow the steps to add a graphical interface to centos7.

Steps:

  1. Install Server with GUI
  2. Install tigervnc-server
  3. Configure tigervnc-server
  4. Configure Alibaba Cloud Security Group
  5. Connect to the VNC graphical server

1. Install Server with GUI

yum update -y
yum groupinstall -y "Server with GUI"

This step takes about 10 minutes. It’s recommended to use a screen session to install in the background.

2. Install tigervnc-server

useradd vncuser
yum install tigervnc-server

3. Configure tigervnc-server

I don’t want to run VNC as root, so I added a vncuser as the VNC user. Switch to that user and set the VNC password (you need to enter it twice).

su - your_user  # If you want to configure VNC server to run under this user directly from CLI without switching users from GUI
vncpasswd

Next, rename the default configuration file.

cp /lib/systemd/system/vncserver@.service /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:1.service

Edit the config file username:

vi "/etc/systemd/system/vncserver@:1.service"

Change user to the username you just added. Here’s my config file:

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

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/vncserver -kill %i > /dev/null 2>&1 || :'
ExecStart=/sbin/runuser -l vncuser -c "/usr/bin/vncserver %i -geometry 1280x1024"
PIDFile=/home/vncuser/.vnc/%H%i.pid
ExecStop=/bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/vncserver -kill %i > /dev/null 2>&1 || :'

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then start the VNC service:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start vncserver@:1
systemctl status vncserver@:1
systemctl enable vncserver@:1

Check if port 5901 is open via the network; if yes, it’s successful:

netstat -ano | grep "5901"

You can see port 5901 is open successfully.

4. Configure Alibaba Cloud Security Group

Open port 5901 access in Alibaba Cloud console. Set your own IP address here; if you have a dynamic IP, you can add the ISP-assigned subnet via subnet settings.

5. Connect to the VNC graphical server

I use VNC Viewer to connect to the centos7 VNC server just configured, using IP plus port.

Here’s the connected graphical interface:

Summary

This article introduced how to achieve graphical interface access on centos7 using Server with GUI and tigervnc-server. It provides a good visual solution for centos users or Linux beginners who need a GUI. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the blogger by email for answers.

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