On Sun, Jun 08, 2003 at 06:44:54PM -0600, Matthew Pittard wrote:
Windows has a feature that I'm really curious to know if Linux supports. I really like the new Remote Desktop Connection that Windows allows. The reason I like it is because I can start documents and jobs in Windows and then check up on them at home. Now I know I can connect remotely to a Linux box via ssh and used the software installed on that machine remotely, however, is there any way for me to log into my machine remotely and see my desktop just as if I were sitting infront of that computer--just like the Windows Remote Desktop Connection allows me to do?
The closest thing I know of is VNC. You can have clients attach to and detach from a VNC server session instance. Clients can attach and detach as they please (even with multiple clients onto the same session!). Anything you want remote access to will have to be started in the VNC-managed session, I believe, but there may be some trickery that I am not familiar with here...
There is some trickery, it's called x0rfbserver <http://www.hexonet.de/software/rfb/>. It serves exactly the same function as the windows VNC server, which you might also look into. x0rfbserver is also included in some form in recent versions of KDE. Look in the Control Center under Internet & Network -> Desktop Sharing and select "allow uninvited connections" and "allow uninvited connections to control the desktop" and choose a good password.
For now VNC sessions aren't encrypted, but the password is done with a challenge hash scheme so at least it's reasonably secure. You can always use SSH and port forwarding. Eventually there will be TLS support in VNC. That will be a beautiful day. It's getting better encodings soon too.
There's also a way to have a VNC session started in inetd so that you can host a sort of terminal server with it, but the sessions are lost when you log out. Maybe someday that'll be overcome. The docs for it are here <http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/~andre/extern/ixvnc.htm> but there's no need to patch it anymore. It's in the main releases of all major variants.
You should also be aware of rdesktop <http://www.rdesktop.org/> which lets you connect to your windows sessions from UNIX. It works pretty well these days.
I love being so thoroughly connected.
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