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posted by martyb on Sunday April 30 2017, @01:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ask-Soylent dept.

Recently, someone in my family was not able to get into their home PC with their password, and called for assistance. This means having to drive down to the machine to see what they are doing, and log in with the appropriate account that can reset that password. Work commitments preclude driving there right away to see what is happening, and I am trying to locate a remote access solution. If they were logged into the machine, I could use some sort of remote assistance tool, but that is not an option in this case. There is the possibility of setting up SSH or OpenVPN to access the machine via the Internet, but I am not certain leaving those tools running all the time is the smartest idea in this day and age.

What recommendations do the Soylent community have for securely managing a machine over the Internet when someone is not logged into it?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @01:52PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @01:52PM (#501847)

    What's wrong with SSH? Just don't allow root to log in (or even change the default port if you really want to, but that's just security through obscurity), use a normal account to login and su(do) to do the root things you need to do.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:32PM (4 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:32PM (#501899)

    SSH is limited and difficult to use.

    VNC FTW.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:58PM (#501911)

      if ssh is too complex for you, then you shouldn't be "helping" your family.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @05:54PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @05:54PM (#501928)

      VNC is limited in speed and difficult to use.
      X2Go FTW.

      FTFY.

      (As long as we're talking about remoting in into a Linux box.)

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 30 2017, @06:18PM (1 child)

        by kaszz (4211) on Sunday April 30 2017, @06:18PM (#501937) Journal

        Does that mean that IRIX is out of the question? :p

        Btw, there's some rdp2x etc utilities too I think for those Microsoft boxes.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @11:34PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @11:34PM (#502045)

          Does that mean that IRIX is out of the question? :p

          Yes, it does, as there is no native X2Go server for IRIX. Of course, you could place a Linux box with an X2Go server on the same LAN as the IRIX box, then connect X2GoClient ----------X2Go via SSH------> X2GoServer on Linux ----plain X forwarding----->IRIX and accelerate plain X from IRIX that way.

          X2GoClients are available for Linux (ARM, x86/x64), Windows (x86/x64) and macOS.

          Btw, there's some rdp2x etc utilities too I think for those Microsoft boxes.

          Not sure why you'd want to use those. RDP doesn't allow for remote support of a Windows machine; It "steals" the desktop from the user, rather than sharing it. You're probably thinking of Microsoft Remote Assistance - however, there are no Linux clients that support those connects.