I’ve been using NoMachine for many years, but there’s always something I forget about its intricacies, especially when it comes to Linux. Here are a few tips to get you and future me started on your next adventure. My distro of choice for this example is Fedora, but this should also work on CentOS and RHEL. Execute all commands below as sudo.
Installing NoMachine
Download the latest version from https://nomachine.com and get the rpm version. Once downloaded, you can install it with Software via GNOME, or do it from the command line, using the file you’ve just downloaded.
rpm -i nomachine*
Note that by default and on new installations, our old friend SELinux is enabled and enforcing, ruining every user’s party. Make sure to set it to permissive before attempting the installation, or else NoMachine ain’t gonna work (in which case, uninstall it, disable SELinux then re-install it).
Removing NoMachine
We can use RPM to remove everything that was installed, like so:
rpm -e nomachine
I can’t believe it was that easy! Sadly no amount of RPM searching brought up this package. Just in case this doesn’t work, there are two folders called /usr/NX and /etc/NX with data. Deleting them will remove all traces of NoMachine from your system:
rm -rf /usr/NX /etc/NXChecking up on NoMachine
After successful installation, NoMachine should enable and run the server and makes an app available with which to connect to other systems. If you run into issues with the server, check if the NoMachine server is running on the target. Here’s how to do that:
systemctl status nxserver.service
In an ideal world you’ll see that it’s enabled and running, or a vague reason why it doesn’t (without any solutions for remedy of course). If you want to take a closer look at the dedicated log file, it’ll depend on the distribution where exactly that is. For Fedora, you can use this:
journalctl | grep nx
On this note, here’s a funny story: with my most recent installation of Fedora 39, NoMachine couldn’t run because apparently a file was missing. Closer examination showed that the file was in fact there, so that was a puzzle.
Turns out I had accidentally installed the 32bit version on my 64bit operating system, and that didn’t work. I found this out while I was typing a message for the forum, and re-examining what I had downloaded. Just on the off chance that you run into such an issue, it doesn’t hurt to double-check the bittage (oh, make SELinux permissive at least during installation).