KDE / GNOME on your x10 VPS

[Russ]

This is going to show how to install, configure and run KDE and possibly GNOME desktops from your vps..

Here are the base commands to install (I am using CentOS 5)

yum install kdepim
yum -y install vnc vnc-server firefox x11-xorg
yum install gnome-session

Start up VNC server like so: vncserver

This will ask you for a password, and then create your ~/.vnc directory
(if running as root, it will be in /.vnc or /root/.vnc or /home/root/.vnc)

It is advisable to start up VNC/your GUI as a non-root user, but hey it's your VPS Running 'vncserver' will also start up VNC Server and create some temp sockets.

Now, you'll see VNC server is running by: ps -ef |grep vncserver -- good. Now kill the VNC process like so: pkill -9 vnc and then delete the temp sockets by: rm -rf /tmp/.X1* -- be careful when running rm -rf as root, you could have a typo and do rm -rf / by accident and destroy your VPS!

At this point you have to go into the /.vnc directory, edit the xstartup file and delete the last line (usually has twm & or something), and replace it with: startkde & -- this tells VNC to startup KDE instead of the default window manager, twm (or whatever the last line was).

Your pretty much done at this point, go ahead and execute the command 'vncserver' again, and VNC will startup, using the password specified earlier and create a default VNC instance on VNC port 1.

Give it a few minutes, depending on your VPS specs, to let KDE start up for the first time. Start up your RealVNC client on your PC, and put in <youripaddress>:1, and it should ask for your password that you put in earlier. If you dont see the KDE desktop, check your xstartup file again in /.vnc and make sure the last line is 'startkde &'.

[daman371]

Thanks a lot. This really helped me setup a fedora base server installation for my job.

[taha116]

PPl using VPSes can have how many remote desktop sessions with x10 VPS? Just wandering.

[ichwar]

How do you mean? To or from the x10 vps?