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

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 2

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.