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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: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:17PM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:17PM (#501956) Journal

    For those running linux-systems I set up I use a very oldschool method:
    I simply leave a bootable usb-stick that sets their password back to a default (written on the stick), and I have a startup-script in their system that demands setting a new password if it derects the default is in use.

    Regarding anything with errornessages they know my first thing will be to ask for an mms with a photo of the error, and anything hardwarerelated will need photos of the tag with maker/model and one of the ports.

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