Starting a Remote Session from one Ubuntu machine on another Ubuntu machine

Starting a Remote Session from one Ubuntu machine on another Ubuntu machine

In this article, we look at ways to start a remote session from one Ubuntu machine on another. First to clarify, starting a remote session is not the same as Desktop sharing with tools like VNC.

What I really wanted was to let the remote machine operate using display settings of my client machine. Reason was, on my primary machines at my home, I have a dual display with 23 and 24 inch monitors, one of which is rotated by 90 degrees. Trying to access this over VNC meant that my local view consisted of this extended desktop made up of display real estate that was impossible to manipulate over my client machine that was a laptop.

This requires two steps

1. Step 1: Connect to the machine using secure shell
2. Step 2: Launch a remote gnome session

Here are the steps.

Step 1: Connect to the machine using a secure shell

The first step was to open a terminal windows and start a sescure shell session.

$ ssh -X user@host_machine

For example, in my case that works out to the following:

$ ssh -X arthgallo@192.168.0.XX

It may show a prompt similar to following (I have blanked out my ECDSA key on purpose).

Say yes to continue.

You will have to enter your password to continue.

This will start the remote X session.

Step 2: Launch a remote gnome session

Next launch a gnome session using the following command.

$gnome-session �session=gnome-classic

The new gnome session is launched as part of the primary desktop, and we can see the remote machines desktop on our machine.

Thats it, we are done.

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