Hello All:

I wanted to know what is the best way to connect to my TP server with a remote desktop (vnc or other).. it's a EL 5 w/ plesk... I've never done anything except command line before and wanted to know what the best way to go about this and what is required for setup..

Our installations of linux do not have X Windows installed so there isn't any graphical interface for you to connect to. In theory it could be installed via yum or rpms. If this is what you are getting at then I think it would be best to order one of our spider KVMs.

The best way to connect to your server as is would be through ssh using a client such as putty. That of course would only be a command line interface.

To install kde with CentOS, you issue:
# yum groupinstall kde
or
# yum groupinstall gnome

If you use RedHat with you, the command is the same.

After, depending you program, you can access the graphic interface simply typing the program at ssh prompt (in a session on the *server*), like:
root@remote ~# system-config-network

And the program will magicly appears in your desktop.

But I do *not* recommend you install KDE or Gnome on the server, because is not recommended to install desktop applications on the server, due to memory and CPU consumption. Kde or Gnome have spikes of 100% consumption of CPU resources in intensive use. In rush hours, this is absolutely inconvenient.

The most of important applications have a "text" graphic interface, like 'system-config-network', absolutely identical in funcionality, without needed to install Kde or Gnome.

Regards,
Netino

I use command line daily..... KVM is not quite worth the cost per month when I just need to have a remote web browser every once and a while for testing...I'm not worried about performance as the server is more than powerful enough and isn't going to be used full time...

When I try to yum, both gnome and kde come up as package not found.... I've also tried "GNOME Desktop Environment" as well... no luck...

Any idea where to start?

Just install the Xserver, and kde. Then install/configure vncserver. Last, download the realvnc client for your home computer, and vnc to your machine.

It should be made very clear, even though connecting to X sessions over the network is possible, it is very insecure without another application like VNC or tunneling it over SSH.

Personally, I just use X forwarding with SSH and Xwin32. It is rather expensive, but I get the student license, so it makes it a little cheaper.

to go into further detail, it would appear that groupinstall does not work in our Satellite server at the current time, I'll check into this next week. In the mean time, you should be able to get this working using the following command

You can use FreeNX too:
http://freenx.berlios.de/

It´s the most quickiest.

Regards,
Netino

I must agree with you. FreeNX is great.

Since this is a RHEL topic, I should brag that the RedHat guys gave me the red one the other day: