Using GUI for VM instance created in Google Compute Engine - google-compute-engine

I am a very basic user in Google Cloud Platform.
Is it possible to use a GUI of my VM instance ? I am currently using Centos7 VM.

You can use VNC to connect to VMs on Google Compute Engine. Here's a detailed tutorial for how to set this up.
For added security:
use a long, complex password (though note that VNC limits passwords to 8 characters)
instead of opening up port 5901 to the Internet, consider using an SSH tunnel. This is more complex, and depending on your Internet connection, may slow down your graphics refresh rate, but will be more secure.
To use the alternative approach with an SSH tunnel, here are the differences from the tutorial you need to follow:
don't open port 5901 in the Google Compute Engine firewall
create an SSH tunnel from your desktop/laptop to GCE VM via:
gcloud compute ssh \
${VM_INSTANCE} \
--project $PROJECT \
--zone $ZONE \
--ssh-arg "-L ${LOCAL_PORT}:localhost:5901"
where you need to provide the right parameters for ${VM_INSTANCE}, $PROJECT, and $ZONE that match your configuration. You can choose ${LOCAL_PORT} to be 5901 if you wish, but if you decide to VNC into several different GCE VM instances, you'll have to choose unique ports for your local machine.
You need to keep this connection open to use VNC. If this connection is closed, you will lose VNC access as well.
Instead of connecting to your VM using its external IP, connect via localhost:${LOCAL_PORT} with ${LOCAL_PORT} same as selected earlier in step #2

My need was to connect a Windows TightVNC client to Google Compute Engine Cloud Instance of Debian 10 (Buster). The various tutorials I have worked through omitted one important step: make sure the vnc server is not restricted to localhost.
The essential steps for Google Cloud are summarized as
confirm you have a running VM instance and that you have ssh access.
I explicitly disabled enable-oslogin (how to disable oslogin)
and loaded my own Puttygen-created SSH certificate.
in VPC Networks > Network Interface Details > Firewall and routes > Rules add a rule to allow ingress for ip range 0.0.0.0/0 (or a
known limited range), for tcp:5900-5920 (this allows for up to 20
VNC instances)
set up the VNC server (tutorials here and for debian 9
here and for debian 10 here and more complete and recent
here for debian 10
after doing this, I could not get past "Connection refused."
Missing step: make sure -localhost no is included as argument when starting the vncserver:
vncserver -localhost no
Once all these conditions were satisfied, I had desktop access.

Related

connect to remote mysql server from google cloud

I have a google cloud machine which has an ubuntu Os, I have MySQL database on another server, I opened the remote connection on my SQL server, and I connect to my database from any machine else from my google cloud machine I can not, it taking long time then I have a timeout connection problem.
I think the problem is from firewall rules, so I applied this command to create rule that allow 3306 port
cloud compute firewall-rules create "mysql-remote-access" --allow tcp:3306 --source-tags "mysql-client" --target-tags "mysql-server"
but still, I can not connect to a remote MySQL server
from where can I enable it, thank you
I think your firewall rules is not correct. This one should solve the issue
gcloud compute firewall-rules create "mysql-remote-access" \
--direction=EGRESS --action=ALLOW --rules=tcp:3306 \
--destination-ranges=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/32 --target-tags=mysql-client
Short description: You allow the EGRESS traffic on port 3306 to the destination xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx for the traffic coming from the VM with the tag "mysql-client"
By default all the outgoing communication are allowed, but you might have a rule with higher priority that prevents this
Implied allow egress rule. An egress rule whose action is allow, destination is 0.0.0.0/0, and priority is the lowest possible (65535) lets any instance send traffic to any destination, except for traffic blocked by Google Cloud.
It the rule doesn't work, share all your existing firewall rules.

IPSec tunnel on Google Compute Virtual Machine

I am trying to setup an IPSec tunnel on my virtual machine on Google Compute Engine and it seems all my traffic is blocked. Even though I have open the necessary ports on both the Windows Server 2016 server and Google's Firewall. Question I have is it possible to setup the VPN tunnel on the server it self or should I make use of the Hybrid Connectivity VPN or something else? I have the same setup on a dedicated server but just can't get Main Mode and or Quick Mode functioning at all.
PS I have setup many iPSec tunnels on stand alone server just not on a virtual server using Google Compute Engine.
Thanks in advance for your help on this one.
I was able to set up IPSec VPN server with Debian 10 virtual machine, on Google Compute Engine.
Here's what I did:
While creating virtual machine instance (Debian 10 for example), in "Network interface" window set option "IP forwarding" to "ON";
On "VPC network" page create firewall rule with open ports: "udp: 500, 4500";
Use this script to setup VPN software:
wget https://git.io/vpnsetup -O vpnsetup.sh && sudo sh vpnsetup.sh
It will generate credentials needed for next step. They look like this: "Server IP: ****", "IPsec PSK: ****", "Username: ****", "Password: ****".
For client configuration use credentials generated from above step and IPsec/XAuth protocol while setting vpn connection.
Look here if you encounter problems: https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn/blob/master/docs/clients-xauth.md
Check this guide "IPsec VPN Server Auto Setup Scripts" for more information:
https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn

Google Compute Engine is not responding

My GCP server is down. It was working last day. I can see the server in VM Instances but can not connect using SSH. All the client websites are down.
Can any one help ?
There is several reasons this could happen:
If your disk is full
sshd deamon isn't configured properly
If OS login is enabled on your instance
A firewall rule block port 20
Sometimes, you see some connection errors in the console, that worth to take a look.
EDIT:
I will need additional information if that still not working;
Take a look to your serial console logs and tell me if you have any relevant logs that can help like a kernel panic, issue with networking, permission denied, etc
Use Cloud Shell and try to connect to your VM instance with these commands:
gcloud compute firewall-rules create --network=default default-allow-ssh --allow tcp:22
gcloud compute ssh YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME --zone YOUR_ZONE -- -vvv
If you can't connect from cloud shell, try to ping your VM instance (internal IP & external IP)
I highly recommend to delete your screenshots showing information about your VM instance (Firewall rules, Project name, nmap scans, etc).

How to keep persistent SQL Proxy Unix Socket with Google Compute Engine

I have a GCE instance that uses older mysql connection type and in order to connect to a Google Cloud SQL instance, I open an SSH connection through the browser on the GCE instance and run the following:
> cd /
> ./cloud_sql_proxy -dir=/cloudsql -instances=my-gce-instance-name:us-east1:my-sql-instance-name &./cloud_sql_proxy -dir=/cloudsql -
And then it is open for connections. The problem is, when I close the browser window (or even sign into Google with a different user), the connection is lost. Is there any way to persistently run this Unix socket with Google Cloud Engine?
Generally, you can run a command in the background by appending a & to the end of the command. This will start a background process for the proxy. You can stop the proxy with killall cloud_sql_proxy.
Another solution would be to run the proxy as a service. How to do this wildly varies by distro and version. Ubuntu 16 is typically bundled with systemd.

Google Compute Engine LAMP Stack SFTP,SQL and HTTPS

I've setup a google compute VM, and can access phpmyadmin and the default index page. SSH works when I click the button on the website.
I am having issues remotly connecting to my server instance for any sort of management(ftp or sql)
I followed the firewall section here: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/mysql-remote-access
But I still can't connect.
My firewall is configured:
And I have no idea how to get HTTPS working, But it can be a problem to take care of in the future when I fully switch my site over the compute engine. Since I can't switch my domain or current SSL certificates over yet.
EDIT:
More information:
When I try to connect to SQL using client "Sequel Pro" it returns:
With telnet:
When I try connect to SFTP I get:
Could this be caused by me mistyping the password?
Your firewall settings show that you allowed external traffic to both ports 21 and 3306 for TCP protocol. This is good but not enough.
In order to allow remote connections to MySQL, you will need to grant remote access to your username and your external IP address. Take a look at this case for an example. This is also mentioned in step 6 and step 7 of Configure MySQL server on my-server section of the article you specified:
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'TESTUSER'#'<external-ip-my-client>' IDENTIFIED BY '<some-password>';
About the ftp server, the VM instance comes with no ftp service installed, but instead you can use SFTP protocol to connect to it which is more secure than FTP protocol and is highly recommended. Use gcloud compute config-ssh to generate SFTP/SSH key pair. For more information visit Setting up secure FTP on Google Compute Engine artcile.