Freia: VNC for Linux, macOS, Unix via SSH Tunnel

Following shows how to create a SSH tunnel in order to connect to the VNC server running on freia host.

Create SSH Tunnel

  • In example USER-NAME account is used to connect. Replace USER-NAME with user name of the account assigned to you.
  • Replace 1 in "5901" with the number as the end of user name assigned to you. For example, for account fguest2 port is 5902; for fguest3 it is 5903; so forth.

Open a terminal, and type the following to forward local port of 127.0.0.1:5901 on your computer to remote port of freia.ifa.hawaii.edu:5901 at IRTF in background ... 

   ssh -o ExitOnForwardFailure=yes -f -N -L 5901:127.0.0.1:5901 USER-NAME@freia.ifa.hawaii.edu

Connect to freia via VNC viewer

It is recommended you use RealVNC Viewer. TigerVNC client certainly works too from Linux & FreeBSD systems as of 20250902.

Start your VNC viewer in another terminal or via your desktop menu, and use localhost:5901 (established above after creating the SSH tunnel) as the destination to connect to.

Getting support on RealVNC

Refer to RealVNC Help Center and see Using the RealVNC Help Center (get support, etc).

See also ...