How to connect through VNC to Ubuntu on Azure

Connecting to an Ubuntu Server using VNC. Note*:

Requirements

An Ubuntu VM up and running in Azure.
SSH acces to your VM. You can use Windows 10 Bash or PuTTy

Steps

If you haven’t done it from the portal, you can use the Azure CLI to deploy an Ubuntu Server 16.04. You will need to run this command from a terminal that has SSH installed and your SSH keys already generated because it will try to obtain ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. Also, the username you have in your terminal will give you access to the VM.
```
 az group create --name tests --location southcentralus
 az vm create -g tests -n bubulubuntu --image canonical:ubuntuserver:16.04-LTS:16.04.201612210
```
Be patient, the creation of the VM could take some minutes. After it’s done you will obtain a public IP that you can use to SSH into your VM ssh <<VM PUBLIC IP>>

Inside of the VM you should be seeing this output.

  Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-57-generic x86_64)

  * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
  * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
  * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest:
      http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud

  0 packages can be updated.
  0 updates are security updates.


  Last login: Wed Dec 21 21:49:06 2016 from 131.107.160.121
  To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
  See "man sudo_root" for details.


  bruno@bubulubuntu:~$

Lets start by installing TaskSel, which will manage the installation of the Desktop Environment.

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get upgrade
  sudo apt install tasksel

Run tasksel and install Ubuntu Desktop
```
 sudo tasksel
```
Here you should put the cursor on the package “Ubuntu Desktop” and press space in your keyboard to mark it for installation, then press tab to go to <Ok> and finally enter to start the installation.
While this is installing in your server install a VNC client like VNC Viewer from RealVNC

Back to your Ubuntu 16.04 server in the cloud, when the installation is done, install the Vnc Server you have to reboot the VM.
```
 sudo apt-get install vnc4server
 sudo shutdown -r now
```
In your terminal you would see something like this:
```
 Connection to 13.66.48.250 closed by remote host.
 Connection to 13.66.48.250 closed.
```
Give it a couple of minutes before trying to going back in again.
SSH back into your Linux box and configure vncserver, don’t forget the password you choose (only 8 chars)
```
 vncserver
```

Edit xstartup. First lets stop the server

 vncserver -kill :1

And edit ~/.vnc/xstartup so it looks like this:

 #!/bin/sh

 # Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
 unset SESSION_MANAGER
 exec sh /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

 [ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
 [ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
 xsetroot -solid grey
 vncconfig -iconic &
 x-terminal-emulator -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
 x-window-manager &

And now restart the vncserver

 vncserver

Make a tunnel
```
 ssh -L 5901:127.0.0.1:5901 -N -f -l
```
Open VNC viewer and connect to localhost:5901

Resources

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-vnc-on-ubuntu-16-04
http://askubuntu.com/questions/592537/can-i-access-ubuntu-from-windows-remotely
http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=9962
http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=5956
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25657596/how-to-set-up-gui-on-amazon-ec2-ubuntu-server