Want to test some remote desktop options as our local IT doesn’t like the idea of opening port 3389 for xrdp ( which we use currently ).
So I spun up a VM on Google cloud with Rocky Linux 9.7 and installed “xfce” and “xrdp” . I next installed TeamViewer by doing a “dnf install teamviewer-host.x86_64.rpm”
Seems it tries to launch a GUI but I don’t see anything appear on the screen. Even the icon appears on the graphical desktop to launch it. But when I try and launch it, nothing happens. See screenshot below.
The same thing happens when I try and instal Anydesk on a fresh Rocky 9.7 OS. It installs fine, but nothing happens when I click the icon to launch it.
Perhaps my installation of xrdp is confusing things? Should I just install a graphical desktop without any xrdp? I tried installing VNC and “Server with GUI” but that also showed the same issue. Without VNC or xrdp how would I view the graphical desktop on the Google VM?
I tried again using Rocky 8 and it worked. Then I went back and tried again on Rocky 9 but using generic Rocky 9 image instead of Google optimized Rocky 9 image. Then it worked too!
If the box is internet facing, an open port is not good, but there’s usually other things like a vpn in the way, so you’d first connect to the vpn, then access the port from an internal device.
It is internet facing, but we use IP whitelisting. There are only a handful of users so would rather not go the VPN route.
My understanding is what matters is the services that are running, not necessarily the number of ports open. So if we go to Teamviewer or Anydesk, then we still face the same risk except the risk gets moved to port 443 instead of 3389. Or is my understanding off?
