Hello all, Is there a tool in ubuntu that a user can start that reports the real world ip address and configures a home router to open a port to allow remote administration? I have a friend or two for whom it would nice to get them to start a program, report to me the details via MSN or Skype or telephone etc and allow me to log in and fix or make a configuration change to their machine. I know how to set things up using ssh etc but that relies on some initial configuration at the their end. KDE has a nice VNC invite function but it won't do the router config part. It appears the likes of KTorrent and Azuereus have the ability to do some to the router via UPnP to open ports up on the router dynamically so I am guessing all this is possible. Cheers
I'd be interested in such a tool as well, but if all else fails, you could try something like this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=502060 On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 11:56 PM, cmoman <cmoman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all,
Is there a tool in ubuntu that a user can start that reports the real world ip address and configures a home router to open a port to allow remote administration?
I have a friend or two for whom it would nice to get them to start a program, report to me the details via MSN or Skype or telephone etc and allow me to log in and fix or make a configuration change to their machine. I know how to set things up using ssh etc but that relies on some initial configuration at the their end. KDE has a nice VNC invite function but it won't do the router config part.
It appears the likes of KTorrent and Azuereus have the ability to do some to the router via UPnP to open ports up on the router dynamically so I am guessing all this is possible.
Cheers _______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
My solution was a cron job that fetches a non-existent page from my website every 15 minutes. No need to find out the external IP in advance, just look at where the last request for the page came from; Users's crontab; */15 * * * * wget -O - http://zcat.geek.nz/foo >/dev/null My apache access.log; 118.92.239.44 - - [01/Oct/2008:08:02:12 +1200] "GET /foo HTTP/1.0" 404 201 "-" " Wget/1.10.2" DynDNS is also a viable option. There seem to be a number of ubuntu packages to handle it already, as well as some routers already have configuration for it; ddclient - Update IP addresses at dynamic DNS services ez-ipupdate - client for most dynamic DNS services inadyn - client to alleviate the requirements for an Internet name ipcheck - Dyndns.org client to register your dynamic IP address
Is there a tool in ubuntu that a user can start that reports the real world ip address and configures a home router to open a port to allow remote administration?
I just installed the gupnp-universal-cp package, and ran the gupnp- universal-cp program, which discovered my linksys wag54gp2, and lets me query it and configure it. It's not an elegant interface or user-friendly interface though, although i'm sure you can script it. That's kind of the point of upnp after all. Also, I completely failed to add an inbound port 22 mapping via UPNP. Was able to query everything correctly, getting external IP, bytes sent/received, etc.
On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 10:56:15PM +1300, cmoman wrote:
Hello all,
Is there a tool in ubuntu that a user can start that reports the real world ip address and configures a home router to open a port to allow remote administration?
Instead of trying the upnp route, you could have a look at openvpn so that their machines connect to a machine you control instead. In theory, you could make a custom openvpn deb file containing the correct configuration and security certificates, so that they'd only need to click on the deb file to install it... John
More thoughts; http://portforward.com/ has information for forwarding ports on most routers. It also happens to tell you your real-world IP on the first page. Also it might be easier if you send them a script that does an ssh to your own machine and tunnels back to whatever port vnc runs on, which avoids the forwarding problem completely. I got verne to do this; a simple alias and an unlocked private key for authentication so he only has to type one command and I can ssh back into his machine. check the man page for ssh. To tunnel vnc you won't need to install anything new either.
Answering a really old thread I started ages ago. I found this in Linux User magazine yesterday. http://www.teamviewer.com/ A colleague mentioned that he already uses it on Windows and that it works well. I plan to give it a go later this week. It has both 32bit and 64bit Ubuntu clients. Seems like it could be very useful for helping friends and family and especially those that are new to linux. I'll let you know how I get on. Cheers, Chris On 30 September 2008 22:56, cmoman <cmoman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all,
Is there a tool in ubuntu that a user can start that reports the real world ip address and configures a home router to open a port to allow remote administration?
I have a friend or two for whom it would nice to get them to start a program, report to me the details via MSN or Skype or telephone etc and allow me to log in and fix or make a configuration change to their machine. I know how to set things up using ssh etc but that relies on some initial configuration at the their end. KDE has a nice VNC invite function but it won't do the router config part.
It appears the likes of KTorrent and Azuereus have the ability to do some to the router via UPnP to open ports up on the router dynamically so I am guessing all this is possible.
Cheers _______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
participants (6)
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Bruce Kingsbury -
Chris O'Halloran -
cmoman
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Daniel Lawson -
John McPherson -
Shannon Skinner