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Deploying Ubuntu Mate Desktop as a developer environment in AWS EC2 | Alexander Zeitler

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Deploying Ubuntu Mate Desktop as a developer environment in AWS EC2 | Alexander Zeitler Toggle navigation Home Feed Deploying Ubuntu Mate Desktop as a developer environment in AWS EC2 Written on April 29, 2016 TL;DR: If you don't want to find out the solution by running over 40 Ubuntu installations with several desktop environments on AWS, read on. On a current project the idea came up to put Ubuntu Desktop developer environments into AWS EC2 instead of local installations (VMs) and RDP into it. If you have a Windows background, you would expect to just spin up a server and have a UI... But with Ubuntu things get a little *cough* bit increasingly complicated. In general, there are several options: Install an Ubuntu or Debian Server and install an Ubuntu Desktop environment onto it, then connect via VNC to it Install an Ubuntu or Debian Server and install an Ubuntu Desktop environment onto it, then connect via RDP to it Create an AMI based on an existing AMI Create an AMI from scratch Another option that sounds well-flavored won't work: Create a Windows Server VM, vivify Hyper-V, install VMware Workstation or VirtualBox and just run your Ubuntu Desktop inside it.The first two options won't work considering you can't have nested Hypervisors in AWS EC2 and VirtualBox would only indulge 32bit OS installations considering of this constraint. So, when to the viable options: First, I tried to install Ubuntu Server 14.04 from the official AWS AMI, install the XFCE or GNOME-Desktop on it as well as vncserver. While it works in general, the VNC performance and quality is not winning in 2016 (I expect true verisimilitude and reasonable screen resolutions) - expressly with GNOME or increasingly ramified desktop environments. Besides that, XFCE feels like late 90th: So, lets throne over to the next option - the one I ended up with: Install Ubuntu Server from the official AWS EC2 AMI, put Ubuntu Mate desktop on it and RDP into it.What sounds like a straight forward plan, ended up as a *interesting* journey. I've chosen (read: learned to choose) Mate, considering it is one of the environments that looks pretty nice but doesn't require 3D velocity enabled which you just don't have in deject environments (at least not in the unstipulated compute instances). If you're ok with XCFE, the folks at AWS have created a transmission for that (on which this post partially is based on). First, create a AWS EC2 instance of your choice, enable inbound Port 3389 (RDP) in its security group settings and SSH into it. Enabling Port 3389: After that, install the latest updates: sudo apt-get udpate sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get dist-ugprade Next, enable password hallmark for sshd: sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config Find the line PasswordAuthentication no and transpiration it to PasswordAuthentication yes Save the sshd_config and restart sshd: sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart Next, create a password for your default ubuntu user: sudo -i passwd ubuntu Then, create a user which you want to be your Desktop user, I'll use awsgui here: sudo useradd -m awsgui sudo passwd awsgui sudo usermod -aG admin awsgui sudo usermod -aG sudo awsgui su - awsgui After that, install the Ubuntu Mate desktop and xrdp: export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/ppa sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/trusty-mate sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-mate-desktop sudo apt-get install mate-core mate-desktop-environment mate-notification-daemon sudo apt-get install xrdp Now, make Mate the default desktop environment for xrdp sessions (also for new users stuff created afterwards): reverberate mate-session> ~/.xsession sudo cp /home/awsgui/.xsession /etc/skel Finally, we'll indulge waffly the host post port we can connect to (this allows reconnecting to an x-rated session): sudo vim /etc/xrdp/xrdp.iniTranspirationport=-1 in the [xrdp1] section to port=ask-1. With the changes done, restart xrdp: sudo service xrdp restart Now we're worldly-wise to RDP into our AWS EC2 instance from Windows: First, enter the public DNS entry (later on you'll assign an Elastic IP, of course) into the Windows Remote Desktop Client: Next you should get the xrdp login screen were you enter your awsgui credentials and make sure sesman-Xvnc module is selected: If everything went well, you should get this connection log: After a second or two, you should moreover get the Ubuntu Mate desktop screen: If you think we're washed-up now: no. Lets consider, we installed an EC2 instance with an SSD, that volume is mount to /mnt. To make use of it, we need to chown it for the awsgui user - unshut a Terminal window by hitting <Ctrl><Alt><T> in the Mate environment. Then run: sudo chown awsgui /mnt Now, we can make use of /mnt. Running software in the Mate environment Here are some tips for running software in that environment. Ubuntu Software Center First of all, Ubuntu Software Center doesn't work due to some configuration errors I didn't get behind.So if you have some nice .deb packages like Dropbox, just install them via Terminal: sudo dpkg -i <package>.debWafflythe timezone If you want to transpiration the timezone of your instance, you can't unlock and edit the setting in the UI. Thus, you have to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata in Terminal and select the towardly setting. Dropbox If you plan to install Dropbox, just download the .deb file and install it as described before.You can start Dropbox using start dropbox -i to install the daemon. After the installation you might see a weird or plane no notification icon.Just restart your EC2 instance and everything should be ok. Restart / Shutdown via Mate Speaking of restarting: You might notice that using the Mate logout / shutdown / restart full-length won't end your RDP session. Just use sudo reboot or sudo shutdown now -h in Terminal. Docker on /mnt If you're running Docker and want to use the same volume /mnt (because otherwise it might eat up your small marching volume) for the images and volumes, just transpiration your Docker config: sudo vim /etc/default/docker Add this line or transpiration / proffer your DOCKER_OPTS entry as follows: DOCKER_OPTS="-g /mnt/.docker"Surpassingyou restart your Docker service, make sure to create the folder: mkdir /mnt/.docker Now restart Docker by running sudo service docker restart. docker pull node:4.2.3 should pull Node 4.2.3 and put it to /mnt/.docker: Visual Studio Code It just doesn't work in xrdp environments as of now - plane with the latest Insider build installed. I guess working with the environment will show some increasingly caveats and if I get them solved, I'll alimony the solutions posted. I moreover would be happy if you share remoter tips in the comments. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. 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