Skywalker13

Diary of an ex-GeeXboX developer…

X11 and a VNC server

Posted at — Jul 21, 2020

Share your display

When using X11, one of the simplest way to share your desktop remotly is by using the x11vnc server.

You can install it via apt install x11vnc for example

Connect to your remote server with SSH and starts x11vnc by this way:

x11vnc -display :0

Now you can open your display with your favourite viewer by using the display :0.

Remember that you can easily use a SSH jump with ssh -C -J jumpuser@jumphost user@host

If you prefer a graphical interface to open the VNC viewer, I suggest to use Remmina which is a great application. It’s easy to configure the SSH tunnel for a jump.

Do not use TeamViewer, AnyDesk, etc, …

Some people prefer tools like TeamViewer. Even if it seems very useful, it’s a third service and you provide informations to third people. It’s very easy to keep the control of your systems and computers. As you can see here, it’s very simple to access remotly to your whole desktop (and not just some applications via X forwarding) without a lot of settings and pain.

Stay free …