VNC with SSH Tunnelling Configuration Department of Computing Science University of Alberta

VNC with SSH Tunnelling

For this example I am assuming you have setup VNC-Server running on the machine server using display X and have previously installed http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ on your client machine following their instructions, and also installed Cygwin as stated on http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~bmw/cygwin.html (though you can exclude the XFree86 items if you wish).

ssh -l «username» -L 590X:«server»:590X «server»
Login as you normally would.

Or you can use the SSH as a tunnel to forward the port from an insecure Windows PC through a Un*x host. Please note that the data between the Windows PC and the Unix Server is NOT encrypted so the security is only between your machine and the Un*x Server so ensure the path between the Un*x box and the Windows PC is secure by some other means.
ssh -l «username» -L 590X:«Windows_PC»:590X «Un*x_Server»

Now start VNC and connect to localhost:X

Note: You will need to exit the VNC session before you can exit the SSH session.

Note: You can also use the principles of port forwarding found here to set these up using a config file instead of command line.

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