Remote access to a Linux host's desktop with VNC

The following article explains how to access the desktop of a Linux host residing inside the ETH network from another host on the in- and outside. Throughout the article, the following placeholders are used:

• Host A
  This is a remote host in- or outside the ETH network, i.e. your home computer. It will run the software to view a desktop, the VNC viewer.

• Host B
  This is the entrance gateway to the ETH network to bypass the firewall restrictions for connections from the outside, by the name of login.ee.ethz.ch. It is used to tunnel SSH connections. It is not necessary when you're using VPN.

• Host C
  This is the target host you intend to connect to. If it's your personal PC in your office you know its name. Students can use an arbitrary shared student room PC like tardis-d12. If you're using a shared student PC, check it's availability at login.

Connect to the ETH network

If your host A resides outside of the ETH network, you need to connect to it by initiating a VPN connection. The following steps explain the necessary prerequisites.
If your host is alreay inside the ETH network, skip to the next paragraph.

Know your ETH network password

• The ETH network password is used for Wifi and VPN access. It is different from your regular ETH password

• If you're unsure about your ETH network password, login on password.ethz.ch with your regular ETH password and change the former password to a known value.

Install the VPN client

• Go to sslvpn.ethz.ch and follow the instructions provided there to download, install and configure the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client provided by central IT services.

• To log in, use your ETH username in combination with your ETH network password.

• If you have access to additional realms, a.k.a virtual private Zones (VPZ) you can list them by visiting realms.ethz.ch.

Initiate a VPN connection

• Now you are ready to connect the VPN client to the ETH network and continue with the following steps.

Start a VNC server on host C

To start a VNC server instance on your host C you need to initiate a SSH connection to said host.

View and control your remote Desktop on host C

VNC viewer software

The listed VNC software contains a viewer component and is available for both Linux and Windows:

• TightVNC: Opensource

• TigerVNC: Opensource, a fork of TightVNC with additional features

• TurboVNC: Opensource, a fork of TightVNC with peak 3D/video performance as a goal

• RealVNC: Freeware

The above list is not meant to be complete, feel free to install other solutions on your own on your home computer.

• TigerVNC viewer is installed on managed Linux clients
• On managed Windows clients, RealVNC viewer is installed on request

Check (student) host availability

Check with the command htop if any other users are using C's resources right now. If they do, log out and log in to a different host.
A list of student hosts can be shown by issuing the command grep tardis /etc/hosts

And Mac users?

To be documented. Hint: Everything you need is already available in macOS.