Check the windows boot mode

https://www.easyuefi.com/resource/check-windows-is-booted-in-uefi-mode.html

My system is in legacy mode, so the max partition on a single physical disk is 4.

Install ubuntu dual boot alongside legacy windows

http://dailylinuxuser.com/2015/11/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-alongside_8.html

Note: it is different for legacy and UEFI windows dual system.

http://dailylinuxuser.com/2015/11/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-alongside_8.html

Setup SSH server on ubuntu

http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2016/04/enable-ssh-ubuntu-16-04-lts/

SSH to ubuntu

If we just want to ssh to ubuntu from home network, just use the internal ip.

If we want to ssh from outside internet, we need to setup port forwarding in the router (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1558871, https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/19620/ssh-port-forward-to-access-my-home-machine-from-anywhere)

To make the ssh more secure, we would use rsa key (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH/OpenSSH/Keys)

If we already have the rsa key on Mac, for example used for Github, we need to setup a different one as descirbed here. We can also setup ~/.ssh/config to simplify the command to ssh to the remote server, i.e., ubuntu-home [ref1, ref2].

Use sudo service ssh status to monitor the logs of the SSH connection in case hackers blocks in.

Reboot to Windows from Terminal

Follow http://www.webupd8.org/2010/10/how-to-reboot-in-windows-from-ubuntu.html to update the Grub configuration first.

In ubuntu, use sudo grub-reboot 4 to set the next default boot system in Grub to Windows. Then, use reboot to reboot the system. This default setting only works for next reboot. If you reboot from Windows again, the Grub default system will be 0, i.e., ubuntu, again.

To set the default grub boot system permanently, ref

1. edit /etc/default/grub
2. source the change by sudo update-grub

Setup X11 through ssh

Since X11 is not installed by default in current release of maxOS, we first install XQuartz, which is the official X11 on our mac. The steps are

1. start XQuartz
2. in terminal, in addition to the normal ssh command, add -Y or -X
3. open whatever windows you like :)

ref

Setup vnc remote desktop

Follow the steps in ref1, first we need to install tightvncserver on the target ubuntu, we have two options here for how the desktop looks like

[Option 1] use ubuntu-gnome-desktop, ref, ref

[Option 2] use xfce4, ref1. Instead of setting the startup commands like in this ref, I prefer to use

$ vncserver -depth 16 -geometry 1734x1080

to start the vncserver explicitly. The vncserver should be start by this command everytime after reboot. It can be killed with

$ vncserver -kill :1

The terminal launch problem can be solved by ref.

On mac, we can use the native vnc client in Finder as in ref or Chicken vnc like ref.

We may also use screen sharing in Ubuntu 18.04 like this. This is not tested yet.

Known Problems

[Mouse Scroll Too Fast] Unplug and replug the receiver. ref