CentOS 8 - How to set up VNC server

Intro

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to configure a remote desktop session, using VNC in CentOS 8.

Install needed packages

Install the desktop environment:

sudo dnf groupinstall "Server with GUI"

Install some other handy tools:

sudo dnf install nano tmux wget cifs-utils

Edit the following customization file to prevent GNOME using Wayland:

sudo nano /etc/gdm/custom.conf

and uncomment the line:

WaylandEnable=false

Finally, install TigerVNC:

sudo dnf install tigervnc-server tigervnc-server-module

Configuration

Initiate the VNC configuration:

vncserver

Set a password that will be used to access the Remote session.

Now create a service file, to enable VNC to run automatically when rebooting the machine:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/vncserver@.service

adding the following text, changing the user name (in this case pier) to the appropriate user name:

[Unit]
Description=Remote Desktop VNC Service
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
WorkingDirectory=/home/pier
User=pier
Group=pier

ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/vncserver -kill %i > /dev/null 2>&1 || :'
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vncserver -autokill %i
ExecStop=/usr/bin/vncserver -kill %i

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

save and exit.

In some other tutorials, the commands to kill an existing VNC session

/usr/bin/vncserver -kill %i

can be found written with a : before the %i, like this:

/usr/bin/vncserver -kill :%i

The service file mentioned above will not have this, as the name of the running service will contain the columns in it, i.e.:

vncserver@:1.service

instead of:

vncserver@1.service

Next enable the recently created service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start vncserver@:1.service
sudo systemctl enable vncserver@:1.service

Now we need to enable the remote client to connect to the server using a TCP connection, hence opening the firewall port:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=5901/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

You should be able to access the remote session using a VNC viewer, like TigerVNC viewer.