How to install a GUI on Amazon AWS EC2 or EMR with the Amazon AMI

Question

I have a need to run an application that requires a GUI interface to start and configure. I also need to be able to run this application on Amazon's EC2 service and EMR service. The EMR requirement means it has to run on Amazon's Linux AMI.

After extensive searching I've been unable to find any ready made solutions, in particular the requirement to run on Amazon's AMI. The closest match and most often referenced solution is here. Unfortunately it was developed on a RHEL6 instance which differs enough from Amazon's AMI that the solution does not work.

I'm posting my solution below. Hopefully it will save some others from the many hours of experimentation it took to come up with the right recipe.

Answer 1

The top-level script for installing the GUI is listed below. The first thing it does after configuring a few variables is run the script from step 1 above. Because I developed it to function on a conventional ec2 instance, or AWS EMR, and as root or as ec2-user, it comes with some extra baggage. The necessary stages are as follows:

libXfont must be installed before tiger-vnc-server can be used.
the VNC server configuration file should be installed
in the user's home directory, make a.vnc directory
Install the xstartup file in the.vnc directory, as well as a dummy passwd file.
launch the VNC server