I gave to the son of friends who live a considerable distance away an old laptop with Damn Small Linux installed. I installed the same distribution on another old laptop which I have, so that I could try to help him if problems arose. We have been able to solve some problems that way, but it's a slow process, with me doing things on my laptop, then emailing instructions to him. I remember working in the past at workplaces big enough to have their own hurt desks and having my computer taken over by someone else in an attempt to solve some problem I had. That's made me wonder what the equivalent Linux software is. I wouldn't have to run that software on my DSL laptop, but could run it on my Fedora desktop, taking over the other DSL laptop over the Internet. I'd be very grateful if someone could recommend any such software, just to get me started.
Leslie Katz wrote:
I gave to the son of friends who live a considerable distance away an old laptop with Damn Small Linux installed. I installed the same distribution on another old laptop which I have, so that I could try to help him if problems arose. We have been able to solve some problems that way, but it's a slow process, with me doing things on my laptop, then emailing instructions to him.
I remember working in the past at workplaces big enough to have their own hurt desks and having my computer taken over by someone else in an ^^^^ A Freudian slip if ever i saw one! ;) attempt to solve some problem I had. That's made me wonder what the equivalent Linux software is. I wouldn't have to run that software on my DSL laptop, but could run it on my Fedora desktop, taking over the other DSL laptop over the Internet.
I'd be very grateful if someone could recommend any such software, just to get me started.
I would suggest starting with enabling an SSH server on the laptop, with access allowed only by a key, not password (half the internet will be trying to login). You can do almost everything via SSH, but if you need to run graphical programs you can either use VNC or ssh -X to display the windows on your desktop. Unlike Windows, Linux is a true multiuser operating system so you don't need to "take over" his computer to run things on it, it supports multiple users on mutiple terminals.
* Jonathan Purvis <jon(a)purvis.co.nz> [2006-05-11 22:35]:
I would suggest starting with enabling an SSH server on the laptop, with access allowed only by a key, not password (half the internet will be trying to login).
I used to run a webserver on port 80 on my machine. It’d generate 1MB or so of access logs per week purely due to worm probes. Then I switched the server to a rarely used port and the access log has been silent since. So run SSH on a non-standard port and the noise will drop down to an inaudible whisper. Of course you should still use keys, not passwords.
if you need to run graphical programs you can either use VNC or ssh -X to display the windows on your desktop.
Remote X connections over anything slower than LAN are painful. Even DSL doesn’t really help. VNC runs much nicer. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
A. Pagaltzis wrote:
if you need to run graphical programs you can either use VNC or ssh -X to display the windows on your desktop.
Remote X connections over anything slower than LAN are painful. Even DSL doesn’t really help. VNC runs much nicer.
And with the right software, VNC doesn't even need a password! ;) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/11/2344217
I remember working in the past at workplaces big enough to have their own hurt desks and having my computer taken over by someone else in an attempt to solve some problem I had. That's made me wonder what the equivalent Linux software is. I wouldn't have to run that software on my DSL laptop, but could run it on my Fedora desktop, taking over the other DSL laptop over the Internet.
I'd be very grateful if someone could recommend any such software, just to get me started.
Windows works very differently to linux (or any system using the X Window System) in this respect, which makes this fairly difficult to do. However, recent versions of GNOME (2.8 or later I think), have a native port of VNC tied into the X server. If you are running a recent GNOME version (I can't tell you how to check that under Damn Small Linux though), you can access this by logging in as the user, clicking on the "System" menu, then the "Preferences" menu, then "Remote Desktop". Enable 'Allow other users to access your desktop' and 'Allow other users to control your desktop'. Set 'Ask you for confirmation' and for safety's sake, set 'Require the user to enter a password' and set a password. For you to connect, you'll need to use a program suite called VNC. The linux version is normally called xvncviewer. You'll need to know her remote IP address, and if she has a firewall then port 5900 will need to be opened up to allow traffic through to her workstation.
participants (4)
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A. Pagaltzis -
Daniel Lawson -
Jonathan Purvis -
Leslie Katz