VNC over SSH Bastion host

You may ask why and the answer is just sometimes you have to do stupid things.

bastion == jump host

Setup a tunnel

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$ ssh -f -N -p 22 -L 55901:10.35.5.6:5901 -i customer-priv-key opc@<bastion public IP>

Run vnc server

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$ vncserver
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New 'ociserver:1 (opc)' desktop is ociserver:1
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Starting applications specified in /home/opc/.vnc/xstartup
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Log file is /home/opc/.vnc/ociserver:1.log

Note above vncserver also has a custom startup to bypass the systemwide xinit whihc was spawning gnome desktop.

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$ pwd
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/home/opc/.vnc
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$ more xstartup
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#!/bin/sh
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# unset SESSION_MANAGER
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# unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
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#exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
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#!/bin/sh
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xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
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xsetroot -solid grey
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xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &

Connect

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$ vncviewer localhost:55901
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TigerVNC Viewer 64-bit v1.7.0
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Tue Feb 20 13:14:43 2018
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 DecodeManager: Detected 1 CPU core(s)
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 DecodeManager: Decoding data on main thread
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 CConn:       connected to host localhost port 55901
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 CConnection: Server supports RFB protocol version 3.8
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 CConnection: Using RFB protocol version 3.8
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 CConnection: Choosing security type VeNCrypt(19)
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Tue Feb 20 13:14:44 2018
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 CVeNCrypt:   Choosing security type TLSVnc (258)
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Tue Feb 20 13:14:51 2018
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 X11PixelBuffer: Using default colormap and visual, TrueColor, depth 24.
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 CConn:       Using pixel format depth 24 (32bpp) little-endian rgb888
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 CConn:       Using Tight encoding
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 CConn:       Enabling continuous updates