[vox-tech] remote desktop question

[Matt Holland]

Gabe,

> I'm having some difficulties with something. I have a remote machine 
> that
> I need to keep tabs on, and I need to be able to view the remote desktop
> localy. VNC doesn't allow this, but there's a package for kde (the 
> remote
> side runs kde) called krfb that allows this.
>
> Unfortunately, the remote machine is on dsl, and krfb doesn't seem to 
> use
> tight-vnc. Obviously, this makes it very painful.
>
> I'd like to tunnel vnc over ssh to get at least a bit of compression 
> going,
> and that's where I'm running into difficulties.

So you *are* going to use vnc?

> My setup is like this:
>
> my desktop machine ---> firewall/router ----> |interweb| -----> remote 
> machine
>
> from what I understand, I need to run
>
> ssh -C -L 5500:localhost:5500 me@mydesktop
>
> in order to get the tunnel going. Unfortunately, there's the 
> firewall/router
> in the way.

If you are using vnc alone, and if we imagine for a moment that the 
firewall/router isn't in the way:

desktop ----> internet ----> remote_machine,

you would run

ssh -C -L 5902:remote_machine:5901 remote_machine

to get the tunnel going, and (in a *different terminal* on the desktop)

vncviewer -encoding tight localhost:2

That's assuming that the vnc server is running on remote_machine:5901 
and you want it to be forwarded to desktop:5902.  Anyway, the point is 
that the argument to -L is <local-port>:remote_machine:<remote-port>, 
that is, if you're setting up the tunnel by ssh'ing from desktop to 
remote_machine.  If you're doing it the other way (or if that even makes 
sense), I don't know.

I know this doesn't quite address your whole question.  I don't know how 
to deal with the firewall/router, though I would expect that it would 
involve forwarding a port from the router to the remote machine, if 
that's even possible with your setup (are we talking a hardware 
firewall/router, or a linux box?).

It's also not clear to me what the connection is between vnc and krfb, 
which is probably why your port numbers are different (I guess 5500 is 
the standard port for X display :0.0?).

Hope this is helpful, incomplete as it is.

Matt

> am I missing something obvious here? is this even possible?
>
> -Gabe
>
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--
Matt Holland                            |  They call 'em fingers, but
Population Biology Graduate Group       |  I've never seen them fing.
University of California                |
Davis, CA 95616                         |    -Otto