Concorde installations – FreeNX

01Mar07

Once FreeNX is running, nearly everything can be done remotely. That may not be important when you are installing a machine at your home, but remote admin of a server is nice and very helpful. Also I try to spend as little time as possible in server rooms, which are cold, dry and loud. So follow the FreeNX instructions on ubuntu.com, which includes adding the seveas repositories.

Just copy the sources from the web pages and paste them into the synaptic package manager.

I love the terminal console of the Ubuntu Gnome desktop. Copy the command line from an install instructions page on the web. Paste it into the console and >enter<. So that’s how I quickly installed the GPG-Keys necessary for the Seveas repositories.

The FreeNX Ubuntu page also recommends to change the default SSH port from 22 to 8888, which I did as well. Ubuntu by default is NOT root, although those changes are better done using root. So either use the terminal console with sudo and an editor such as “vi” or use the Gnome UI, which again is simple. Alt-F2 opens a command line window, type “gksudo nautilus” and the File Manager is run as root. Then select the config text files as described in the instructions and right mouse click “open with text editor”, do the changes and save the files. Again when copying the command line to restart the SSHD I used sudo, don’t know if it was necessary.

So that’s it, FreeNX is running, all you need now is to install a NXclient on your Linux/Mac/Windows computer, configure the connection and … connect. Don’t forget to set the port to 8888. If it is not working check the firewalls and routers between your machine and the “server”, if the port 8888 is blocked. Enjoy the FreeNX experience.

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