How To Change Default Listen Port Of VNC Remote Desktop In Ubuntu

The Default port used by the Remote desktop feature in ubuntu is port 5900. But for many reasons , you may want to use a different port. Be it a security reason or even if that port is already being used by another computer or by another service . So in such cases it is necessary to change the default listen port of ubuntu's remote desktop from 5900 to whatever you wish . So here's how you do it :

NOTE : In this tutorial i will be trying to change the port from 5900 to say 5400 . You need to have remote desktop enabled for this! ( System->Preferences->Remote Desktop )

Step 1 : Press Alt+F2 and you should see a window like this

Step 2 : There type gconf-editor .

Step 3 : You should now see a window like this

Step 4 : Now go to Desktop->Gnome->remote_access . You should see a window like this

Step 5 : Now if you notice , you can see the first item in the table is alternative_port which is set to 5900. Now right click on that item and click on Edit Key
Step 6 : Now another window would popup. Here change the port from 5900 to whatever you wish . In this case i am going to set it to 5400.


Step 7 : Thats it , now click on OK and you should see 5400 instead of 5900.

Step 8 : Now back on that table , look for the checkbox where it says use_alternative_port and CHECK it. Now close all windows

Step 9 : You should now be able to access ubuntu's remote desktop using port 5400 ( or whatever port you assigned ).