This tutorial explain you how to setup VNC to connect to an HPC with a graphical desktop interface. Go to the next section after that

This page is summary of the Compute Canada documentation about VNC.

Setup of your VNC server

You need to do the steps in this section only one time. Go to the next section if you have already done this.

Install VNC client

Install the VNC client TigerVNC on your computer. The client software is able to connect your computer to another computer.

VNC init

Log into the visualization node, and type vncserver. It will ask for a password. This password is used to access the virtual desktop you create on the server.

vncserver

The command vncserver you just type already created a server. You won’t need it so you should kill it properly. Type vncserver -list to find out the X DISPLAY # and then execute vncserver -kill :<display number>. Most of the time it’s vncserver -kill :1.

Example:

$ vncserver -list

TigerVNC server sessions:

X DISPLAY #	PROCESS ID
:6		25607

$ vncserver -kill :6
Killing Xvnc process ID 25607

$ vncserver -list

TigerVNC server sessions:

X DISPLAY #	PROCESS ID