Share your Ubuntu Desktop Using Remote Desktop
Posted by admin on December 17th, 2006 
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By default ubuntu will come with vino-server so it is very easy to configure to enable remote desktop sharing in your ubuntu machine.If you want to access ubuntu machine remotely you need to login in to your ubuntu system.
Important note :-
Remote Desktop will only work if there’s a GNOME login session.Leaving your computer with an unattended GNOME login session is not secure and not recommended.
Some Tips
1) You can lock your screen using System—>Quit
Once you click on quit you should see the following screen here you need to select lockscreen
2) switch off your monitor when computer is left unattended
Configuring Remote Desktop
First you need to go to System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop
Once it opens you should see the following screen
In the above screen you need to configure remote desktop preferences for sharing and security
For Sharing
you need to tick the box next to the following two options
Allow other users to view your desktop
Allow other users to control your desktop
For Security
you need to tick the box next to the following two options
Ask you for confirmation (If you tick this option some one need to click on allow from remote desktop once it connected if you don’t want you can untick this option)
Require the user to enter this password:
Password: Specify the password
Connecting from Ubuntu Machine
Open your terminal from Applications—>Accessories—>Terminal and enter the following command
vncviewer -fullscreen 192.168.2.23:0
now you should see the following message asking for password enter the password after complete success you can see VNC authentication succeeded message and starting remote desktop
VNC viewer version 3.3.7 - built Jul 4 2006 10:04:48
Copyright (C) 2002-2003 RealVNC Ltd.
Copyright (C) 1994-2000 AT&T Laboratories Cambridge.
See http://www.realvnc.com for information on VNC.
VNC server supports protocol version 3.7 (viewer 3.3)
Password:
VNC authentication succeeded
If you want to quit vncviewer
Press ‘F8′ and select Quit viewer
Connecting from Windows machine
If you are trying to connect from your windows machine you need to install vncviewer of your choice i have installed from here http://www.realvnc.com/download.html.Install this program once you install this you can opem from start—>All programs—>RealVNC—>VNC Viewer 4—>Run VNC Viewer once it opens you should see the following screen here enter the remotemachine ipaddress:0 format and click ok
Now it will prompt for password enter your password and click ok
Now on the remote machine you should see the following screen asking for permission to allow this connection you need to click on allow this will comeup only if you tick “Ask you for confirmation” option under sharing
Once it connected you should see the remote machine desktop like the following screen
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December 31st, 2006 at 3:52 am
Does this article relate only to systems behind a firewall, like a home network? OR
Does all this also apply across the Internet. For example, My sister calls from the next town and asks me to look at her screen for some reason and I have to connect through 2 ISPs (mine and her’s) she uses DSL and I use a cable modem?
January 1st, 2007 at 3:31 am
this should work across internet also and is there any error messages
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:47 am
I believe vino-serv listens on port 5900 by default, so you should have that forwarded on through your firewall.
March 19th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
From this thread I figured out you can turn on remote desktop thru a putty window by typing:
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /desktop/gnome/remote_access/enabled true
and disable the auto prompting by typing:
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /desktop/gnome/remote_access/prompt_enabled false
May 4th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Remoting into a system using VNC is really handy. One thing to remember is that most VNC connections are NOT encrypted. I tunnel my VNC session through ssh.
$ ssh -L :localhost:
For example. If I’m vnc’ing from a computer called home-box to work-box. I’ll tell ssh to connect to home-box.some-isp.com using port 5910 on localhost. I’ll connect to work-box.columbia.net using default port of 5900. The ssh command line I’d use is:
$ ssh -L 5910:localhost:5900 work-box.columbia.net
to login to the remote computer.
Then I’d tell vnc_viewer on home-box to connect to localhost:5910
Now all your vnc traffic to work-box is nice and encrypted.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Oops, I used greater-than and less-than signs to show enter your values here and that got dropped as bad html. My bad.
The part the reads:
$ ssh -L :localhost:
should read:
$ ssh -L local-vnc-port:localhost:remote-vnc-port other-computer
Hope this works better.
David
August 11th, 2007 at 9:15 am
This is awesome. Unless someone shows with pictures how easy it can be, its hard to realize that it really is. THanks.
ubuntugeek rocks
December 8th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Thanks for that tip David (and especially the example) just what I was looking for because I only use ssh to connect in from outside.
Thanks.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Hey, I’m trying to set up my Ubuntu so that I can access it from a college Windows XP machine. I have installed NX and that was no luck, I opened ports 22 and 44 on my router but still no look. I have installed the VNC server on my machine and downloaded the viewer for a XP machine.
I have opened the ports 5900 and 5600 just incase on my router and nothing is working
My router is a Linksys WRT54
Please help!
And if possible is there a program that I can use to recover lost files for Ubuntu ex3/ ex2 partitions?
Many thanks
February 16th, 2008 at 6:38 am
I have a problem with VNC to Ubunthu…
I am getting connection to remote desktop , but it showing a blank screen only.
Iam connecting from a windows xp based pc in same LAN network .
Looking for a solution
Regards,
February 16th, 2008 at 10:14 am
@najeeb
try this
Edit the following file
gedit /etc/gdm/gdm.conf-custom
Just add the following line
DisallowTCP=false
save and exit the file