Chris Jones wrote:
Very cool, thanks!
Now let's assume SSH is the only open port on remote machine (local,
too, but that doesn't usually matter). Which of the methods you
mentioned are still viable?
If we are talking about connections over a slow network (by which I mean
anything less than a 100Mbp local network !) I would go the vnc or freenx
route. Anything else is likely to be too slow to use in practice.
I have no experience with freenx (although I've heard good things about it)
but have used vnc, so I'll describe this.
First, you have to start a vnc session on the remote machine. Note that vnc is
not an inherently secure system, not at all in fact but it can be used
securely. I would run something like
> vncserver :8 -localhost -geometry 1024x768
to start a vncserver session, on display 8, screen dimensions 1024x768
The -localhost is important, as this means you can only connect to the vnc
session from the 'localhost' (i.e. the remote one). Whats use this I hear you
ask, well ...
on you local host run
vncviewer -via <username>@<remote-host> :8
The via means vncviewer will first establish an SSH connection to the remote
host. Then, once there it will connect to the vnc server, and pipe everything
back to you via the SSH tunnel. Hence at the remote machine the vncserver is
connected to from its 'localhost' and all is well.
one final thing, killing the vncviewer does *not* kill the session. This is
partly what makes this useful as it means you can disconnect at one location,
move to another machine and reconnect and find you desktop just as it was
before. However, for security reasons when you finally no longer need the vnc
session, you need to explicitly kill it with
vncserver -kill :8
from the remote site.
As I said at the start, I've also heard good things about freenx. I gather it
makes the process much slicker, without the need for all the CLI stuff.
However, its not at all standard in most distros, whilst vnc is and installing
in places significant burden on the remote sys-admin, so you might have to
fight to convince them to do so (unless you happen to be that admin ;) )
What about 100/1000 connections with SSH-only?
