How to install a minimal X11 GUI vnc environment on RHEL7/8 for Oracle installation

by Jephe Wu

Summary

In RHEL7, since Redhat removed twm window manager and used mwm instead, however x11 is still configured to use /usr/bin/twm though, if Oracle DBA needs to install Oracle database on RHEL7 remotely with a minimal X11 environment,  there's a way to make it so.

Steps

1.  create symbolic link /usr/bin/mwm to /usr/bin/twm 

cd /usr/bin

ln -sf mwm twm 

Note: if you still would like to use twm, you can install from RHEL6 below

download twm window manager from RHEL6

wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/x86_64/Packages/xorg-x11-twm-1.0.3-5.1.el6.x86_64.rpm

2. install tigervnc-server and xterm
yum install tigervnc-server xterm

rpm -ivh xorg-x11-twm-1.0.3-5.1.el6.x86_64.rpm (optional for twm)

3. run vncserver :1 on RHEL7 after ssh with required user (usually oracle)

4. use vncviewer to connect to RHEL7 ip address at 5901 port

Note: or you can use ssh port forwarding to forward local port 5901 to remote server with ssh(putty)

Or  ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 remote_server_ip

Reference

http://houseofbrick.com/twm-window-manager-on-rhel-7/ 

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E52668_01/E54669/html/ol7-vnc-config.html