Enable high resolutions in Linux VM’s

Posted by on Feb 15, 2015 in Other

Something of a n00b post here, but I recently spun up an instance of the rather nice Elementary OS Linux distro and as is common with Linux, especially in a VM, the display mode was set to something horribly low that consumed a fraction of my screen. Thus, time to crack open the terminal and fix the problem: sudo nano /etc/default/grub 1 sudo nano /etc/default/grub Inside the editor change: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash” 1 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash” To: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=hyperv_fb:1920x1080" 1 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=hyperv_fb:1920x1080" Obviously substitute 1920×1080 for your preferred resolution. Save the file in nano and restart the VM. You should find that the VM restarts at your chosen...

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Enabling RDP on a Linux instance running in Azure

Posted by on Dec 30, 2014 in Azure

This post is a quick instruction on how you can enable the RDP protocol in an Azure linux instance. Why would you want to do this? Well, although you’ll probably want to SSH into the box for the majority of times, there are instances where GUI access is handy. If, like me, you like to consolidate all your RDP session (I personally use the excellent mRemoteNG ) then having this enabled is useful. Thankfully, getting RDP working on an Azure Linux instance is trivial. In my case, I’ll be using Ubuntu 14.04: Update apt-get to make sure your sources are up to date. If you don’t do this then you’ll get 404 errors in the next step sudo apt-get update 1 sudo apt-get update Once your repository is fully up to date, you can install a desktop. I’ll stick with the default, Ubuntu Unity. I’m not a massive fan of Unity but given the little time I’ll spend in here, it will suffuce. sudo apt-get install Ubuntu-desktop 1 sudo apt-get install Ubuntu-desktop This will take several minutes, so go make a coffee. Once you have a desktop environment installed, you can enable RDP: sudo apt-get install xrdp 1 sudo apt-get install xrdp The last thing to do is to open the RDP port on the Azure firewall. By default it isn’t enabled, so log into the Azure portal, select your Linux VM, go to the endpoints tab and add RDP to the list of open endponts Virtual Machines > Your Linux Box > EndPoints > Add > Add standalone Endpoint > Remote Desktop 1 Virtual Machines > Your Linux Box > EndPoints > Add > Add standalone Endpoint > Remote Desktop Once that is done and the Azure configuration has been applied, you should be set to...

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