If you're using a SSH connection with X11 forwarding enabled (and have a local X11 server running), you should be able to start a GNOME session on the remote server by using the command gnome-session
.
But you'll find that won't give you access to the CD drive.
You see, the CD drive permissions are granted to a locally logged-in user only, even if the login is done in text mode on a virtual console. Not to simply whoever is having a GNOME session. The system will know the difference. The ACL assignment is done by udev
: the uaccess
tag assigned to devices in /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules
will determine which devices will get this treatment.
If you want to have the capability to use the CD drive while logged on remotely over SSH, your user account needs to have the cdrom
group membership assigned to it. That needs to be done only once, but it requires root access. For example, if your user account is named helper
:
sudo usermod -a -G cdrom helper
or
sudo gpasswd --add helper cdrom
or
sudo adduser helper cdrom
After any one of those commands is executed, you'll need to log out to make the change effective. On your next login, you'll be a member of the cdrom
group (in addition to whatever group(s) you were member of before) and can always use the CD drive, whether you're logged in locally or remotely. That's what the cdrom
group is for.
Other groups with similar purposes are listed here: https://wiki.debian.org/SystemGroups
id
say?).