AWS EC2 RHEL 7.2 from OSX with NoMachine 5 shows black screen and disconnects

[samkhan]

Hello,

I did the following to create a headless AWS EC2 instance with RHEL 7.2 and GNOME desktop. I am trying to connect to it from OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 but I see a black screen and few seconds later NoMachine gets disconnected.

• EC2 Server

  • Create new EC2 instances from an AMI for RedHat Enterprize Linux 7.2

  • Configure security groups to listen on ports

    • SSH 22 from anywhere

    • TCP Custom 4000 from anywhere

    • UDP Custom 4687 from anywhere

    • Assign key-pair

      Login to remote server
      sudo su
      yum groupinstall “Server with GUI”
      systemctl set-default graphical.target
      systemctl start graphical.target
      exit
      Download NoMachine installer
      sudo rpm -ivh nomachine_5.1.26_1_x86_64.rpm
      sudo /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxnode –availablesessionsetup
      mkdir ~/.nx
      mkdir ~/.nx/config
      cat ~/.ssh/authorized_keys > ~/.nx/config/authorized.crt
      Create user on remote machine
      sudo useradd -m -d /home/mcv -s /bin/bash mcv
      sudo passwd mcv
      sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver –useradd mcv
      

      • Install nomachine_5.1.26_1 on the local computer

      • Create a new connection by following prompts

        • Host is the ip address of the remote server

        • User NX protocol

        • Choose key based authentication

          • Check the box for including the key in the connection file

          • Need to use workaround for this issue on OS X: https://www.nomachine.com/TR10M06094
          • Server side logging

            • sudo nano /usr/NX/etc/server.cfg

              • Uncomment and set the following:
                SessionLogLevel 7
                

                sudo nano /usr/NX/etc/node.cfg

                • Uncomment and set the following:
                  SessionLogLevel 7
                  SessionLogClean 0

The attached screenshots show the eventual blank screen after which I get disconnected but the user “mcv” is still logged in on the server side

who -u

mcv :0 2016-06-25 19:24 ? 8942 (:0)

ec2-user pts/0 2016-06-25 18:39 . 3020

Because of this when I try to reconnect from local computer I see a message “Waiting for Desktop user to authorize connection” for a while and then I get disconnected again. I have sent logs to forum @ nomachine . com

Any help is greatly appreciated!

~ Sam

Attachments:

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   Screen-Shot-2016-06-25-at-18.42.35.png
   

[graywolf]

You put “ec2-user” as NoMachine session user, but created desktop as user “mcv”. It looks that such mismatch caused the described behavior.

[Author]

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