Linux Access from Mac OS

Both Ubuntu and Mac OS X come with pre-installed VNC solutions. The vino package in Ubuntu is a VNC server for GNOME. To enable screen sharing one can start Desktop Sharing Preferences and enable an option to allow other users to view desktop.

Screenshot from 2016-02-13 20-37-18

If you are using a Mac on the same network your Linux system should appear in the Shared tab in the Finder.

Screen Shot 2016-02-13 at 9.05.10 PM

Clicking on Share Screen will invoke Mac’s VNC utility and prompt for the password.

Screen Shot 2016-02-13 at 9.03.24 PM

If the connection fails

Screen Shot 2016-02-13 at 8.18.38 PM

you might need to disable encryption on the server (Ubuntu) side by running the following command.

ilya@lin1:~$ gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false

There other ways to invoke Share Screen in Mac OS.  You can do it directly from the terminal with

$ open /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Screen\ Sharing.app

or you can open an XTerm and start a VNC session from it specifying the IP address and port of the target system.

$ open vnc://10.0.1.35:5900

If the connection is successful and you can view and control your Ubuntu desktop on the Mac you can add

/usr/lib/vino/vino-server

command to you Startup Applications.

Screenshot from 2016-02-13 20-35-05

Of course for pure command line access one can just ssh into the Linux system.   To allow ssh access on the default port 22:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server
$ sudo ufw allow 22

To make the setup more secure one can follow recommendations of thepcspy.com to install fail2ban:

$ sudo apt-get install fail2ban

and change the port setting from the default to some value in the 10,000-64,000 range.   To do that change the line “Port 22” in /etc/ssh/sshd_config to the chosen value and run restart the server.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Once that is done, you can connect to the right port with

$ ssh -p 12345 yourname@10.0.1.35