Alex Harris wrote:
> For those who are interested, I'll be doing a presentation on remote
> access methods (SSH, VPN, and VNC), at HCC during the Tuesday meeting.
Thanks for the presentation Alex!
Here's a web page (by Stefano Coletta) about something I tried to
describe at the meeting -- using SSH to tunnel VNC securely across
multiple multiple routers doing NAT:
http://www.mindcreations.com/projects/manuals/helpdesk/helpdesk.php
I used Stefano's method with a few tweaks to do remote customer support
of some beta software deployed to school classrooms. I used TightVNC
and the PuTTY command line ssh client glued together with some VBScript
so the teacher could setup the tunnel and start their VNC server with
one command. One change I did was to configure sshd on the relay system
to listen to port 443 (https) -- some school systems blocked outbound
port 22, but not secure websites ;)
The company is now defunct but the support method worked very well. In
one instance I was able to fix a problem for a teacher early in the
morning before class started -- using my Linux machine at home. In
another instance I fixed a problem for a teacher on Labor day since we
were both working that day -- It's not just software developers at
startup companies that work crazy hours, some teachers do too!
FogCreek software has turned secure VNC into a side business. I believe
their Windows-only CoPilot service uses a very similar method based on
VNC over SSL, but with much nicer packaging. They charge $10/day for
use of their relay system. Their source code is released under the GPL,
see https://www.copilot.com/faq/#28. FogCreek thought this was so cool
they even made a movie about building it:
http://www.projectaardvark.com/movie/
Anyway, you can have all sorts of wacky fun using SSH and VNC, thanks
again Alex for bringing up the topics!
-- Mark Polhamus
-- meplists@earthlink.net
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