Making Desktop work in tandem with existing local server Installation

Until recently, I was developing using the Neo4j Desktop in windows.

As I moved to Ubuntu to host my server, I did the proper installation steps and added the gds and apoc plugins (see example: here Installation - Neo4j Graph Data Science)
And everything is working fine. Then I thought that it may be best to also install the desktop (in the server) so that I can activate/deactivate the plugins as required, have access to bloom etc. without having to go through the pain of moving files to directories etc.

I downloaded the desktop but realised that it created another instance of neo4j server. It just does not understand that there is a neo4j server instance in /usr/bin/, data in /var/lib, config in /etc/neo4j/neo4j.conf etc.

So the connection to the original server can only be as a "remote" connection meaning that there is no functionality to open bloom, activate plugins, access the ETL tool etc.

Have I missed something? If I place the Desktop in a specific directory or if I change something in its configuration will it be possible to detect the existence of the server (that was installed via apt) and avoid the creation of a second instance?

Thank you.

Hello @exonianp ,

Unfortunately, Desktop only manages Neo4j DBMSes which it has installed. There is not yet the ability to "mount" an existing DBMS other than to add it as a remote connection (as you've observed).

You could take a look at @relate/cli which can access the Desktop environment. Desktop uses @relate under-the-hood for managing the DBMS installs.

Best,
ABK