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Please follow all instructions for doing setting these instructions so as to ensure that your network traffic is properly secured.
X-Server Approach
VNC
To use VNC, you will need a VNC client downloaded onto your local computer. Start by logging into the remote system using ssh (these instructions assume the host is named host.ccbb.utexas.edu). Run the command,
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vncserver --localhost
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this ensures that the VNC connection will not be available out to the Internet. The first time that you do this, you'll be be prompted for a password, or you can run vncpasswd to set it. Please pick a strong password that is different from your real EID password, and from the password that you use for the system. The system will respond like this:
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New 'host:1 (user)' desktop is host:1
Starting applications specified in /home/user/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /home/user/.vnc/host:1.log
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Before logging in, you will want to open the file mentioned above (xstartup) in an editor. At the top you will see the lines
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# unset SESSION_MANAGER
# exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
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which you will want to make active by removing the #. If you do not do this, you'll be placed into a very dumbed down X windows manager called twm. This is very low bandwidth which might be good in some cases, but can be painful to use. Unless you know what you are doing don't change anything else in the xstartup file.
Now you are ready to log in to the remote system again. This time you will want to use a local SSH tunnel from port 5901 on your local computer to port 5900 + N where N is the desktop number mentioned above (5901 in this example case). If you are using a GUI ssh client, you'll need to look in the various options for how to do this. If you are using Terminal.app on a Mac, or if you are a Linux user you can just type
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ssh -L 5901:host:M user@host.ccbb.utexas.edu
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replacing M by the number that you calculated above (5900 + N). Once this is done you can use your VNC client software to connect to the host localhost:5901 which will then connect you, via the ssh tunnel you just created, to VNC server running on the remote software. When you are done you can close your VNC client, and log out of the above ssh connection to shut down the tunnel. This leaves your VNC server session running so that you can connect later, and resume work. If you are done using VNC then you can run
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vncserver -kill :N
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Again N is the number of the desktop.