How to install a GUI on Amazon AWS EC2

Question

I want to install a GUI on Amazon EC2. On Google I found sudo yum groupinstall "X Window System" "Desktop" , in the following text you can see my Version and Available Groups in groupinstall

cat /proc/version gives me the following information

Linux version 3.4.48-45.46.amzn1.i686 (mockbuild@gobi-build-31004) (gcc version 4.6.3 20120306 (Red Hat 4.6.3-2) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Wed Jun 12 02:04:37 UTC 2013

[root@ip-172-31-7-175 ec2-user]# yum grouplist
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, priorities, security, update-motd, upgrade-helper
Setting up Group Process
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * amzn-main: packages.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
 * amzn-updates: packages.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
Installed Groups:
   Editors
   FTP Server
   Legacy UNIX compatibility
   Mail Server
   Network Servers
   Networking Tools
   PHP Support
   Perl Support
   System Tools
   Web Server
Available Groups:
   Console internet tools
   DNS Name Server
   Development Libraries
   Development tools
   Java Development
   MySQL Database
   MySQL Database client
   NFS file server
   Performance Tools
   PostgreSQL Database client (version 8)
   PostgreSQL Database server (version 8)
   Scientific support
   TeX support
   Technical Writing
   Web Servlet Engine

thaks, SnowN

Answer 1

Please have a look at this blog for installing a IDE on an Amazon EC2 machine that you can then VNC remote desktop into.

Amazon EC2 does not come with X11 or other graphical support by default, but it's quite easy to install.

Answer 2

Follow this tutorial: http://devopscube.com/setup-gui-for-amazon-ec2-linux/

---> You might come to some errors and that could be due to what previous folks said that EC2 does not come with X11 support. Since Amazon Linux AMI do not include the X11 packages, you need to instal them:

sudo yum install -y gcc-c++

sudo yum install -y libX11-devel

sudo yum install -y fontconfig-devel

sudo yum install -y libXcursor-devel

sudo yum install -y libXext-devel

sudo yum install -y libXfixes

sudo yum install -y libXft-devel

sudo yum install -y libXi-devel

sudo yum install -y libXrandr-devel

sudo yum install -y libXrender-devel

then try it again

Answer 3

你也可以参考这个视频。