Headless Ubuntu 18.04 with VNC Access

Ok, real quick before I forget how I did it.

What I wanted to do was to run Ubuntu 18.04 without a monitor and be able to access it via VNC. Here’s the steps:

  1. Install Ubuntu 18.04. I made sure the system was set up to auto-login.
  2. Make sure its all patched up to current.
  3. Enable the VNC server (vino), and disable Vino encryption (haven’t found a Windows or OSX viewer that supports Vino’s encryption)
    http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2016/07/remote-access-ubuntu-16-04/
  4. Install the “dummy video” Xorg server
    sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-dummy
  5. And configure it. From this GIST
    https://gist.github.com/mangoliou/27c6c5867a95932f21ae59ad7152aa33
    I just ran
    sudo wget -P /etc/X11 https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mangoliou/ba126832f2fb8f86cc5b956355346038/raw/b6ad063711226fdd6413189ad905943750d64fd8/xorg.conf
  6. Finally switch from Xwayland to Xorg. From stackexchange
    https://askubuntu.com/questions/961304/how-do-you-switch-from-wayland-back-to-xorg-in-ubuntu-17-10
    Just uncomment
    #WaylandEnable=false
    in
    /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
  7. And reboot.

3 thoughts on “Headless Ubuntu 18.04 with VNC Access

Leave a comment