How To Set Up GUI On Amazon EC2 Ubuntu server

Michael Hayes

Amazon AWS Tutorials
49

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 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)

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.

 sudo apt-get update 
 sudo apt-get install lxde

1 2	sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install lxde

Step 3: Once lxde is installed on your server, start the ldxe using the following command

 sudo start lxdm

1	sudo start lxdm

Step 4: Install xrdp to establish a remote desktop connection since you can’t have a GUI using putty. Use the following command to install xrdp

 sudo apt-get install xrdp

1	sudo apt-get install xrdp

Step 5: Set a password for the default user “ubuntu”, since remote desktop connection requires username and password.

ALSO READ: How To Setup AWS CLI on Linux/Windows

 sudo passwd ubuntu

1	sudo passwd ubuntu

Step 6: Start the windows remote desktop client and enter the public DNS or the elastic IP of your server instance and hit connect.

Step 7: Enter the username and password of the server instance and hit ok as shown below.

Bingo!! you can start using your Ubuntu server with GUI via remote desktop connection.

19 Comments

yoni
February 13, 2016 12:11 am

in aws, dont forget to open the right port. i has no idea which, so i opened all the traffic ^ ^

Reply
- Gil
  June 11, 2017 9:10 am
  
  It is mentioned in the pre-requisites 🙂
  
  Reply
Olivier
June 7, 2017 9:17 pm

Getting this on ubuntu 16.04

[email protected]:~# start lxdm
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused

uname -a
Linux ip-10-30-32-116 4.4.0-1013-aws #22-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 31 15:41:31 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Reply
- Olivier
  June 8, 2017 1:29 am
  
  just a quick note your docs work on version 14 of ubuntu just not 16
  
  Reply
saubhik
June 20, 2017 6:22 pm

Does not work for Ubuntu 16.04.
Gives the following error while doing sudo start lxdm:
“start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused”

Reply
- Himansu
  June 28, 2017 9:54 pm
  
  Bro just ignore the message and forward to further request.
  It will surely work, personally tried by me.
  Gets the same error but i ignored.
  
  Reply
Tabsun
August 11, 2017 1:59 pm

For Ubuntu 16.04 you have to use for Step 3

sudo systemctl stop lightdm
sudo systemctl disable lightdm

sudo systemctl start lxd
sudo systemctl enable lxd

Reply
- Jay
  October 15, 2017 2:08 am
  
  Thanks!
  
  This article was written in 2017… should have used a post-16.04 Ubuntu especially since the Ubuntu AMI is 16.04.
  
  Reply
- Jay
  October 15, 2017 7:13 am
  
  For step 4, I had to do:
  sudo systemctl start xrdp
  sudo systemctl enable xrdp
  
  And for step 5, I had to create a new user because “ubuntu” cannot have a password if you set up the instance with a private key.
  
  Reply
Schrenk
October 11, 2017 4:55 pm

WORKS LIKE A CHAMP!
THANK YOU…!

Reply
PhanidharSwarna
April 26, 2018 2:54 pm

Fantastic, looking for such solution for a long time

Reply
Brew
June 25, 2018 12:54 pm

Firstly thank’s Tabsun for your Solution..
But Further….
Get’s the Grey Screen and RDP Terminates. Does anyone face this issue…??

Reply
- Joe
  September 5, 2018 5:41 pm
  
  I’m getting the Grey screen and RDP termination as well.
  
  Reply
- Abhishek
  October 23, 2018 5:50 am
  
  hello!
  I’m facing the same problem.. Get a grey screen with two cross markers and the session brings me out of the remote desktop connection.
  
  Reply
  - Aditya Jain
    November 23, 2018 9:16 am
    
    Any solution for this?
    
    Reply
suresh
July 23, 2018 12:44 pm

Hi Good Post,

Please help copy paste from my windows machine to ubuntu server.

Reply
- Bibin Wilson
  September 18, 2018 7:37 am
  
  Follow this article https://comtechies.com/copy-files-between-windows-and-linux.html
  
  Reply
subash
September 22, 2018 9:04 pm

Cool.. struggled with step 3. Thanks Tabsun.

Reply
jitsssss
November 1, 2018 2:50 am

Yeah right, just ignore the error.. it works fine with 16.04

Reply