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ubuntuamazon-ec2amazon-amivncxfce

Creating AMI for VNC on Ubuntu

I'm trying to create an AMI of an Ubuntu 18.04 EC2 that's configured with VNC.

I've successfully SSH'd into it and connected via a VNC Viewer. I then created an image from the running instance, however launching new instances from this image fails to start VNC again.

My VNC Setup:

After SSHing into my instance:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies tightvncserver

vncserver # then set my password

vncserver -kill :1

Then I set ~/.vnc/xstartup to:

#!/bin/bash
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
startxfce4 &

Then it worked if I did: sudo chmod +x ~/.vnc/xstartup and vncserver

Things I tried:

  • Simply launching an EC2 from this image
  • Launching an EC2 from this image with the user data:
#!/bin/bash
vncserver

How can I create a custom AMI so I could launch an EC2 that autostarts a VNC server (or even starts the server after a user data script)?

Solution

  • Managed to do it with crontabs.

    After killing the vncserver, I just ran:

    crontab -e

    Then chose my preferred editor and added @reboot vncserver :1 to the file.

    From here, creating the image from the EC2 console was as simple as selecting the instance -> actions -> image -> create image.