How to: Install TeamViewer headless on Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora

TeamViewer has become the standard in remote desktop management. The support for a wide variety of operating systems is unparalleled. Here’s how you can install TeamViewer headless on Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora.

Headless

A headless Linux system is a computer that is running on the Linux bash shell only without a desktop. This helps reduce overhead needed and reduces the overall attack surface of a server machine. Though, it is possible to make connections to the remote machine shell-only in TeamViewer.

In a desktop environment, TeamViewer has been shown to beat out traditional methods such as VNC in security, ease-of-use, and performance.

Installation

In order to install TeamViewer on RHEL, CentOS, or Fedora we are going to need to download the RPM package first. You can find the RPM package for the 64-bit version here. We will be using the wget utility to download our file directly. If you don’t have that install by default, you can simply install it with dnf or yum:

sudo dnf install wget

You can download the file using wget:

wget https://download.teamviewer.com/download/linux/teamviewer.x86_64.rpm

Then, install TeamViewer directly by using either yum or dnf:

sudo dnf -y install teamviewer.x86_64.rpm

This will then install TeamViewer and all required dependencies. Now, we are going to configure TeamViewer to start accepting connections. You can configure and link your TeamViewer account by starting the setup process:

sudo teamviewer setup

You will be asked to accept the EULA and enter your username and password. Since this is the first time using your account on this machine, TeamViewer will prompt you to verify your device via email.

Once you’re done with that, proceed to enter your username and password again. You will be asked if you want to continue with the confirmed account information. Go ahead and type y and hit enter.

Make sure that TeamViewer is running successfully in the background by checking it’s systemd status:

systemctl status teamviewerd

Try connecting to the machine through your TeamViewer client. Depending on whether you have a desktop environment such as GNOME or Xfce installed, you will be taken to their respective login screens. If not, surprisingly TeamViewer will connect you to the bash shell instead.

Wayland

If this is your first time installing TeamViewer with a new desktop environment, you may be unable to connect. This is because the display server is using Wayland by default or you logged in with Wayland. TeamViewer displays the following for Wayland:

This can be fixed by simply logging out, rebooting your machine. Upon entering your username, click on the little cogwheel right next to sign in:

And select another option such as Standard or Xfce Session, your configuration may vary. Enter your password and sign in.

You should now be able to log in through TeamViewer.