Amazon EC2 Linux servers do not come with GUI, all the operations
have to be done using ssh client like putty. So if you wish to have a
GUI for your Amazon Linux instances, you can achieve it pretty easily.
Once you installed the GUI essentials on your server, you can access it
via windows, remote desktop client. If you are using Linux, then you can
use the VNC viewer as a remote desktop client. In order to have a GUI, a
lightweight LXDE desktop has to be installed on your server.
LXDE
Specially designed for cloud-based servers.
Lightweight GUI for Linux
Better interface
Multi-language support
Supports standard keyboard shortcuts
Fast performance
Prerequisites
A running Ubuntu ec2 instance.
Security group inbound traffic configured for ssh and RDP access (22 and 3389)
Note: This setup is tested on Ubuntu 18.x server
Getting Started
Step 1: Connect to the server using ssh client putty. How To Connect Ubuntu Server Using Putty Step 2: Make sure that RDP port is enabled on the Ubuntu instance in which you are going to install lxde. Update the server and install lxde using the following commands.
Note: You can set up your own user and password for remote desktop
Step 5: Start the windows remote desktop client and enter the public DNS or the public IP of your server instance and hit connect. Step 6: Enter the username and password of the
server instance that we created in step 5 and hit ok. Make sure RDP 3389
is enabled in your security group.
Bingo!! you can start using your Ubuntu server with GUI via the remote desktop connection.
By default, ec2 instances don’t have password authentication. You
have to use the private key to connect to the instances. However, you
might have situations to use password-based authentication for your ec2
instances. In this tutorial, I have added the configurations required
for password authentication for ec2 instances.
Password Authentication For AWS ec2
I assume that you have an instance up and running. Follow the steps given below for the password authentication setup.
Note: I higly
discourage using password authentication on cloud instances unless
required. It is always safe to use key based authentication.
Step 1: Log in to the server using ssh client of
your choice using the private key. For Windows machines, you can use
putty for connecting to the instance. If you want the steps, you can
follow this article. Connecting ec2 instance using putty.
If you are using Mac or Linux, you can use the following command to connect to the instance.
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ssh -i your-key.pem username@(public-ip-address)
Step 2: Open the sshd_config file.
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sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Step 3: Find the Line containing “PasswordAuthentication” parameter and change its value from “no” to “yes“
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PasswordAuthentication yes
If you want to set up “root” login, find “PermitRootLogin” parameter and change its value from “prohibit-password” to “yes“
After the changes, save the file and exit.
Step 4: Setup a password for the user using the “passwd” command along with the username. You need to enter the password twice. For example, if you want to set up a password for “ubuntu“, use the following command.
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sudo passwd ubuntu
Step 5: Now, restart the “sshd” service using the following command.
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sudo service sshd restart
Step 6: Now you can log out and log in using the password you set for the user. For example,
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ssh ubuntu@35.162.225.240
I hope this article helps. Let me know in the comment section if you face any errors.
