Can I manage a Linux machine easily from a Windows box? (Part II)

Jeremy Pavlov August 11, 2008 1 Comment

This is a follow-up to an older post about administering a Linux machine from Windows, that can be found here.

So, you want to get remote desktop access to your Linux server’s GUI from a Windows machine. Well, NoMachine is a great way to do it. Assuming you have a working GUI on the Linux machine, and a Windows client, we can get to it…

First, get and install the NX client for windows:
http://www.nomachine.com/download-client-windows.php
…or direct…
http://64.34.161.181/download/3.4.0/Windows/nxclient-3.4.0-5.exe

Now, shell into your Linux machine, and as root, run the following commands (each command is one separate line, even though the blog wraps it around):

mkdir /tmp/nx
cd /tmp/nx
wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.4.0/Linux/nxclient-3.4.0-5.i386.rpm
wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.4.0/Linux/nxnode-3.4.0-6.i386.rpm
wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.4.0/Linux/FE/nxserver-3.4.0-8.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh nxclient-3.4.0-5.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh nxnode-3.4.0-6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh nxserver-3.4.0-8.i386.rpm

That’s it! Well, except for a little client-side setup (like setting up a profile for connecting, etc), but you can handle that.

Note that when you connect, it will launch the GUI on the Linux machine if it is not launched already. This may be unsettling for some, but I’m assuming that you’re already a GUI kind of person if you’re doing this in the first place…  😉

Oh, and I don’t know how much of a “duh” this is, but you need to be able to access port 22 on the Linux machine (from the client) for this to work…

Enjoy!

NOTE: This post was updated 20100122 for corrected links.