How To Install VNC Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VNC Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, VNC (Virtual Network Computing) server is free and open-source software that is designed for allowing remote access to the Desktop Environment of the server to the VNC Client whereas the VNC viewer is used on the remote computer to connect to the server.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation VNC Server on an Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install VNC Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing VNC Server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

First, type the following command to install Xfce on your server:

sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies xorg dbus-x11 x11-xserver-utils

Next, install TigerVNC on your Ubuntu server:

sudo apt install tigervnc-standalone-server tigervnc-common

Once installed the next step is to run the vncserver command which will create the initial configuration and set up the password:

vncserver

Result:

You will require a password to access your desktops.

Password:
Verify:
Would you like to enter a view-only password (y/n)? n
/usr/bin/xauth:  file /home/chedelics/.Xauthority does not exist

New 'server2.idroot.us:1 (chedelics)' desktop at :1 on machine server2.idroot.us

Starting applications specified in /etc/X11/Xvnc-session
Log file is /home/chedelics/.vnc/server2.idroot.us:1.log

Use xtigervncviewer -SecurityTypes VncAuth -passwd /home/chedelics/.vnc/passwd :1 to connect to the VNC server.

After VNC Server started and created some of its files. We are now can turn it off to modify the xstartup file (startup script) to make it start with xfce4:

vncserver -kill :1

Step 3. Configuring VNC Server.

First, create the following file:

~/.vnc/xstartup

Add the following files:

#!/bin/sh
unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
exec startxfce4

Next, run the following command to make sure permissions are correct:

chmod u+x ~/.vnc/xstartup

Step 4. Creating a Systemd unit file.

The next step is to create a VNC Server startup script:

/etc/systemd/system/vncserver@.service

Add the following files:

[Unit]
Description=Remote desktop service (VNC)
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=chedelics
PAMName=login
PIDFile=/home/%u/.vnc/%H%i.pid
ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :%i > /dev/null 2>&1 || :'
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vncserver :%i -geometry 1440x900 -alwaysshared -fg
ExecStop=/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :%i

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The next step is to enable the unit file with the following command:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable vncserver@1.service
sudo systemctl start vncserver@1.service

Step 4. Connecting to VNC server.

To access the remote desktop on vnc server from the windows system, you must have vnc viewer installed on your system. There are various vnc viewers available to use. Download anyone and install it on your system, for example:

• TightVNC
• RealVNC
• TigerVNC

Congratulations! You have successfully installed VNC Server. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing VNC Server on your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official VNC website.