How do I install GUI (graphical desktop) on Amazon EC2 instances running Ubuntu Linux?

Notice

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Supported Ubuntu versions

The following versions are supported by Amazon DCV server

• Ubuntu 24.04 (x86_64)
• Ubuntu 24.04 (arm64)
• Ubuntu 22.04 (x86_64)
• Ubuntu 22.04 (arm64)
• Ubuntu 20.04 (x86_64)

System Requirements and Prerequisites

• EC2 instance with 2 GiB or more memory
• Attached security group allows inbound TCP and UDP port 8443 from your IP
• More than 3 GB free disk space to install graphical desktop components and DCV server
• Attached EC2 IAM role with the below policy. Replace region with your instance AWS Region code

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
       {
           "Effect": "Allow",
           "Action": "s3:GetObject",
           "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::dcv-license.region/*"
       }
    ]
}

Install desktop environment and desktop manager

Install GNOME desktop and disable Wayland protocol

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ubuntu-desktop-minimal
sudo sed -i '/^\[daemon\]/a WaylandEnable=false' /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

Install DCV server

Install DCV server, web client and virtual session support, and enable server daemon

cd /tmp
OS_VERSION=$(. /etc/os-release;echo $VERSION_ID | sed -e 's/\.//g')
curl -L -O https://d1uj6qtbmh3dt5.cloudfront.net/nice-dcv-ubuntu$OS_VERSION-$(arch).tgz
tar -xvzf nice-dcv-ubuntu$OS_VERSION-$(arch).tgz && cd nice-dcv-*-$(arch)
sudo apt install -y ./nice-dcv-server_*.deb
sudo apt install -y ./nice-dcv-web-viewer_*.deb
sudo apt install -y ./nice-xdcv_*.deb
sudo usermod -aG video dcv
sudo systemctl enable dcvserver

Configure DCV server

Configure console session, enable session storage and QUIC transport protocol

sudo sed -i "/^\[session-management\/automatic-console-session/a owner=\"ubuntu\"\nstorage-root=\"%home%\"" /etc/dcv/dcv.conf
sudo sed -i "s/^#create-session/create-session/g" /etc/dcv/dcv.conf
sudo sed -i "s/^#enable-quic-frontend=true/enable-quic-frontend=true/g" /etc/dcv/dcv.conf

GPU instance

If you are using a GPU instance, install and configure GPU drivers

Non GPU instance

For other instance types, install and configure XDummy driver

sudo apt install -y xserver-xorg-video-dummy
sudo tee /etc/X11/xorg.conf > /dev/null << EOF
Section "Device"
    Identifier "DummyDevice"
    Driver "dummy"
    Option "UseEDID" "false"
    VideoRam 512000
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "DummyMonitor"
    HorizSync   5.0 - 1000.0
    VertRefresh 5.0 - 200.0
    Option "ReducedBlanking"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "DummyScreen"
    Device "DummyDevice"
    Monitor "DummyMonitor"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport 0 0
        Depth 24
        Virtual 4096 2160
    EndSubSection
EndSection
EOF

Restart X server and DCV server

sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target && sudo systemctl isolate graphical.target
sudo systemctl stop dcvserver && sudo systemctl start dcvserver

Access graphical desktop environment

Set user password

Specify a strong password for login user

sudo passwd ubuntu

Clients

DCV offers Windows, Linux, macOS and web browser clients.

HTML 5 client for web browser access is at https://<EC2-IP>:8443 (where <EC2-IP> is your EC2 instance IP address). Native clients supports QUIC and can be downloaded from https://www.amazondcv.com/

Login as ubuntu with your configured password

Web browser client

Install on EC2 launch

To automate install when launching a new Ubuntu EC2 instance, you can use the below user data script.

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ubuntu-desktop-minimal
sudo sed -i '/^\[daemon\]/a WaylandEnable=false' /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

cd /tmp
OS_VERSION=$(. /etc/os-release;echo $VERSION_ID | sed -e 's/\.//g')
curl -L -O https://d1uj6qtbmh3dt5.cloudfront.net/nice-dcv-ubuntu$OS_VERSION-$(arch).tgz
tar -xvzf nice-dcv-ubuntu$OS_VERSION-$(arch).tgz && cd nice-dcv-*-$(arch)
sudo apt install -y ./nice-dcv-server_*.deb
sudo apt install -y ./nice-dcv-web-viewer_*.deb
sudo apt install -y ./nice-xdcv_*.deb
sudo usermod -aG video dcv
sudo systemctl enable dcvserver

sudo sed -i "/^\[session-management\/automatic-console-session/a owner=\"ubuntu\"\nstorage-root=\"%home%\"" /etc/dcv/dcv.conf
sudo sed -i "s/^#create-session/create-session/g" /etc/dcv/dcv.conf
sudo sed -i "s/^#enable-quic-frontend=true/enable-quic-frontend=true/g" /etc/dcv/dcv.conf

sudo apt install -y xserver-xorg-video-dummy
sudo tee /etc/X11/xorg.conf > /dev/null << EOF
Section "Device"
    Identifier "DummyDevice"
    Driver "dummy"
    Option "UseEDID" "false"
    VideoRam 512000
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "DummyMonitor"
    HorizSync   5.0 - 1000.0
    VertRefresh 5.0 - 200.0
    Option "ReducedBlanking"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "DummyScreen"
    Device "DummyDevice"
    Monitor "DummyMonitor"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport 0 0
        Depth 24
        Virtual 4096 2160
    EndSubSection
EndSection
EOF

sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target && sudo systemctl isolate graphical.target
sudo systemctl stop dcvserver && sudo systemctl start dcvserver

Set ubuntu password after installation is compete

CloudFormation template

To quickly get up and running with DCV for internal testing, you can use CloudFormation template at DCV CloudFormation page and aws-samples - Github

Additional information

Refer to DCV documentation site