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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?
(Score: 5, Funny) by VLM on Sunday April 30 2017, @03:24PM (4 children)
How do you Remotely Manage (AC's) Family's Computers?
OK well when Auntie's linux kernel 3c509 driver isn't recognizing her ethernet card because its a newly released PCI identity with the same hardware but a different PCI identification thingie. If she had a working ethernet card she would have downloaded the patched version and not bothered me ... you walk auntie thru running lspci to find the PCI identity thing and then help her wander thru the filesystem to find her distro's kernel source and build system then edit the e2k driver to recognize the new PCI id number essentially hand replicating the patch then provide morale support while she compiles the kernel the "correct" way for her distro then install it and reboot and damn if it didn't work first time, I love stories that end that way. No big deal she did tougher tasks as a MVS370 sysprog before I was born, but why not ask a local guide for help and "kids these days" know all about linux so there I was. This is only a slightly fictionalized version of a real conversation 20 years ago. Auntie being a MVS370 sysprog is not the fictionalized part, of course by then she was a retired VM cluster and MVS/390 sysprog I think they were calling it "z-system" by then. One of those who still calls hard drives "DASD" decades later. She thought it was so cute that my first financial job site was running an older version of VTAM or CICS or whatever it was than she was running at that time obviously our sysprog was not as cool as she was. Whatever.
log in with the appropriate account that can reset that password
Oh, I thought you meant real sysadmin stuff, but you're actually asking what to do when your family is retarded (sorry for lack of political correctness, which everyone knows is a pretty high priority for me). You could ask for something you want in return, maybe get laid, but perhaps that kind of "keep it in the family" behavior how the family ended up full of retards to begin with, so rule that out. No AC, I think the final solution to your problem is adoption. Better get used to calling me "Daddy". We'll see who calls who for help, LOL.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @04:41PM
Pretty much. There's no way that I'd drive several hours because somebody is being a dumb ass unless I can hit them.
Other than that, perhaps point a web cam at the screen and tell the user what to type. Then get a robot arm to smack them remotely.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @05:04PM (1 child)
Nice story. Non issue. If you are supporting family members, why are they updating their computers? Isn't that something *you* would be doing after testing?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 01 2017, @12:16PM
First of all you forgot to call me Daddy as per above. So that would be "If you are supporting family members, Daddy, why are they..." Secondly a woman who was applying IBM PTF patches to her mainframe before I was born can mostly handle "apt-get" by herself without nephew handholding.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday April 30 2017, @06:31PM
Hey wait a minute! Auntie is pulling your leg; the PCI version of the venerable 3c509 family of 3Com cards never received 64 bit OSsupport!
(Nor did the ISA card, which I expect she had working just fine in her windows 98 desktop until she upgraded...maybe it's a 'dual personality' slot that shares IRQs and DMA access for ISA 16-bit and PCI 32 bit slot resources?)
And if you are trying to get the PCMCIA 10mb 3c50x cardbus dongley appendage to work for Auntie, make sure you use the original dongle cable because its wired for 10mb only due to missing about, oh, everything except for tx, rx, and ground...cat5 might work as long as you didn't plug the cable in fully). Still, thats way more than enough to connect in at 300bps over a shared dialup connection. Just make sure NETBeui is enabled so the mainframe printer was reachable it if wasn't IP enabled and you ran DLSW+ over a virtual token ring bridge to ethernet over dialup.
Of course, if she was calling about the lp0 on fire message on her teletype, but had to hang up to call you but without logging out first, adoption may not even be necessary if you wait long enough for the automatic and continuous-feed combustable paper feeder to burn to its inevitable conclusion. I think that was the second leading cause of death when playing Zork without a CRT and relying on an echo of the line feed being routed to lp0.