Install and configure VNC server in CentOS 6, Red Hat 6 & Oracle Linux

To access any remote desktop servers we can use VNC. By installing and configuring VNC we can access graphical interface of any VPS servers are cloud servers. In this setup, we are going to use tiger VNC to configure the VNC server in Red Hat Enterprise server.

This guide focus on Red Hat 6 version and their variants Operating Systems. If you are looking to setup VNC server on RHEL 7/8 kindly find below.

Port Required for VNC Viewer

 5900 , 5901 , 5902

Enable the required ports, we are working with only one user, However we are defining firewall rules for three users

iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5900  -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5901  -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5902  -j ACCEPT

Save the firewall rules.

# sudo iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables
# sudo service iptables save

Install VNC Server

To install the tigerVNC we need to have a valid yum repository, To perform a installation run

# yum install tigervnc* -y

After installing the package start to configure the VNC.

Configure Tiger VNC

To make our required changed use anyone of editor to edit the VNC config.

# vim /etc/sysconfig/vncserver

Remove the # in last two lines of the configuration file, Or make a copy of those two lines and make your required changes.

The Current setting will be as below after making the changes.

#VNCSERVERS="2:sysadmin"
#VNCSERVERARGS[2]="-geometry 800x600 -nolisten tcp -localhost"

Save and quit the file using wq!, Switch to the user sysadmin using
Create a VNC password

Creating Password for User

Switch back to the specific user account by running su – sysadmin Then create a vnc password for the user. Make-sure to confirm the password by entering two times.

# vncpasswd
Newpass : **********
verifypasswd : **********

Restarting/Commit the changes

Restart the VNC service to make the configuration changes effective.

# /etc/init.d/vncserver restart

Enable the service Persistently

Set the VNC server to start while the system boots up.

# chkconfig vncserver on

Then Connect to the user sysadmin using  vncviewer command

# vncviewer -via sysadmin@server.example.com localhost:2

That’s it we can view the user sysadmin’s desktop using VNC.

Conclusion

To access anyone of Linux users Desktop environment we can use vnc viewer by installing tiger VNC. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay tuned for upcoming articles.