Remote desktop access

Sometimes it is useful to manage the CPU and GPU instances from a visual desktop interface.

Follow these steps to set up a remote desktop environment with VNC server using TigerVNC on Linux systems like Ubuntu 24.04. This setup allows you to remotely access a lightweight graphical desktop on Verda virtual machine instances.

Connect to your instance using SSH

ssh user@INSTANCE_IP_ADDRESS

Update The System

Follow the instructions on Securing Your Instance if you have not done that before

apt update
apt upgrade

Install XFCE Desktop Environment and tigerVNC server

apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies tigervnc-standalone-server tigervnc-common

Remove nvidia drivers and reboot if using CPU only node

# Do only if using CPU node
apt remove *nvidia*
reboot

Start the VNC server:

tigervncserver -xstartup /usr/bin/startxfce4

Now your instance has a VNC server running and is ready for the VNC connection. Next commands are run on the machine that you want to use for viewing and controlling the desktop.

Create an SSH tunnel to secure the VNC connetion

Run this command on the machine that you will use to connect to your instance. If you want to keep the SSH tunnel connection in the background, you can use screen or tmux commands.

ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 username@REMOTE_IP

Connect Using a VNC Client

Use any VNC viewer (e.g., TigerVNC Viewer, RealVNC, or Remmina) and connect to localhost:5901.

Tips

• You can change the vnc ports and make multiple connections, they will get assigned different ports 5901, 5902 etc..

• You can also use other compatible Linux desktop environments like Ubuntu Desktop (Gnome), KDE Plasma on the instances. XFCE Desktop is recommended for most users since it is lightweight and simple to use without much configuration and works with default Verda OS images.