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→Establishing a Secure Remote Desktop Session
<pre>
vncviewer localhost::5900
</pre>
The vncviewer session will prompt for a password if one is required, and then launch the VNC viewer providing secure access to your desktop environment.
In the above example we left the ssh tunnel session running in a terminal window. If you would prefer to run the ssh session in the background, this can be achieved by using the –f and –N flags when initiating the connection:
<pre>
ssh –f –N -L 5900:localhost:5900 hostname
</pre>
The above command will prompt for a password for the remote server and then establish the connection in the background, leaving the terminal window available for other tasks.
If you are connecting to the remote desktop from outside the firewall keep in mind that the IP address for the ssh connection will be the external IP address provided by your ISP, not the LAN IP address of the remote system (since this IP address is not visible to those outside the firewall). You will also need to configure your firewall to forward port 22 (for the ssh connection) to the IP address of the system running the desktop. It is not necessary to forward port 5900. Steps to perform port forwarding differ between firewalls, so refer to the documentation for your firewall, router or wireless base station for details specific to your configuration.
