In this guide I briefly explain how you can get remote persistent session on the Mattarello Linux servers from any local computer, Windows, Linux or OSX.

  1. Write me a mail where you ask to obtain a VNC session. You need to specify: Name Surname Period of usage Server IP address

  2. I will provide you a number (an integer), let’s call it ID together with a password (typically the password is the same of the ssh user enabled to use matlab). I’ve installed on every server the XFCE4 desktop manager as it is fast and very reactive. I hope you like it.

  3. Depending on your operating system follow these instructions. This method is based on TightVNC, a client to visualize VNC sessions.

Windows:

Download and install TightVNC

  1. Go to TightVNC
    http://www.tightvnc.com/download.php
  2. Download the Installer for Windows 64 bit. The current version as of August, 2, 2016 is the following:
    http://www.tightvnc.com/download/2.7.10/tightvnc-2.7.10-setup-64bit.msi
  3. Start the installation, press Install and during the installation select Custom and just install TightVNC Viewer
    tightvnc1
  4. Select custom installation
    tightvnc2
  5. Leave the checkboxes Associate to .vnc files and Add exception for TightVNC to Windows Firewall to checked:
  6. tightvnc3
  7. tightvnc4
  8. Continue to Next and end the installation

After the installation ended, fire up TightVNC Viewer

  1. Start TightVNC Viewer
  2. You will get the following screen
  3. This is the TightVNC Viewer default window
    tightvnc5
  4. In the Remote host text box insert the server address followed by colon and the specific VNC port that you received. Change serveraddress with your server IP address and ID with the ID I’ve provided.
  5. For example:
    tightvnc6
  6. Press connect and you should get your remote session up and running!

EXAMPLE

You need to use server 10.231.128.17 and I gave you the ID=5902. You need to start TightVNC Viewer and in the remote host textbox insert:

10.231.128.17:5902

and after that press Connect. This ID will follow you everywhere and you can connect to the same remote session from multiple places also together if you want to showcast your screen to other people.

It’s extremely important that you don’t logout otherwise you will lose your session.

Linux

Remmina is the default VNC viewer that is installed in Linux. If you don’t have Remmina installed, open a terminal and install it:

sudo apt-get install remmina

  1. Start Remmina (also called Remmina Remote Desktop Connection Client)
  2. Choose “New Connection”
  3. remmina1
  4. On the Remote Desktop Preference window, choose the name of the connection under Profile:Name
  5. Change the Profile:Protocol from the standard “RDP -Remote Desktop Protocol” to VNC - Virtual Network Computing
  6. Under the Basic tab, in the server textbox you must insert the server name followed py “:” and the ID of the VNC session.
  7. remmina2
  8. For example: 10.231.128.17:5902
  9. Choose Color Depth: True Color 24 bit
  10. Choose Quality: Best (slowest)
  11. Save the Connection to use it in the future
  12. Et voilà you have your remote VNC connection to the server.

Mac OSX

OSX already has a VNC viewer installed that is called Screen Sharing. Look into `Applications->Screen