Opening a linux session remotely from windows?
 

Hi,

Is there any software out there that would allow me to open a shell remotely on a windows box? Specifically, I have a linux server upstairs (desktop), and would love to be able to take my wife's laptop (on a wireless network) and open a terminal window so I can enter shell commands to the linux box from anywhere in the house.

Is this possible?

I saw someone post about PuTTY, and their brief description made it sound like I could do that, but come to find out that PuTTY is just a linux emulator for windows.

Thanks,

warren

a linux emulator ?
go here
its a telnet / ssh client ..

er, it's not a linux emulator. It's an ssh client/terminal emulator.

What you have to do is set up the telnet or (preferably) SSHd on the linux computer. Then you use PuTTY to connect to it remotely.

If you want a GUI instead of a text shell you can use VNC. VNC is cross-platform and uses the same kind of client/server setup: You set the linux box up to be the server and you connect to it using the VNC client.

Hope I cleared that up.

Riiighhht.....I guess thats why I'm still posting in the newbie forum...inability to understand documentation describing what I'm really looking for when I see it.

Thanks for the kick,

Warren

If you consider using VNC in the future, then you should read this website I ripped out of these forums:

http://freesco.no-ip.org/VNC/

G'day Warren,

Congratulations on using your name mate!

I prefer TightVNC, which is more robust....

If there is no security concerns telnetd or sshd are OK. Havent used Fedora, but most recent Redhat stuff doesn't have telnet enabled.

On your linux box you would need to run "service --lstatus-all" to see what is available...

VNC needs setup on the linux box. Run vncserver on the linux box and follow the prompts. Make note of the display that you need to connect to eg <hostname.home.net>:1

You will need to install VNC viewer (tight VNC ) on the windows box. This will give you a full desktop!

Cheers

Telnet maybe is OK if you have a completely private network, but it is a bad habit if you ever have to use a serious network.

It's such a bad habit that I suggest you never use telnet, rlogin, rsh, etc. Disable in.telnetd. ssh is sufficiently easy to use that it's no real loss.

service --lstatus-all - that should be service --status-all!!!

Any X session "should" be redirected through ssh. Never done this though! Tight VNC and Cygwin can be used to achive this on the windows box - not newbie stuff!

Warren, how secure is the wireless stuff? Have you put encryption on it?

Cheers

It's not safe at all. I think pretty much anyone could drive up in front of my house and hack in...that is on my short list of things to change!

So, on my list:

• Put encryption on my wireless network.
• Get secure remote access to my linux box working (thanks for the help so far!)
• Get my Fedora linux box to recognize the sound card (the automatic detection fails).
• Get my HP 3820 and HP Photosmart printers shared from my linux box so that my XP laptop with wireless network card can print on them (ack!).

Thats some list for me, having just done my first linux installation!

At least I have some memory of using unix from college (comp sci degree)...so I'm loving the rich shell environment. I was always the kind of windows developer that uses every keyboard hotkey he can get his hands on.

Warren

wep is inherently insecure. If it's REALLY important not to be eavesdropped on, wireless isn't a good way to go right now.

Hopefully some day in the future this will be fixed. But don't let yourself develop a false sense of security just because you use wep.

Well, I have PuTTY working fine now from my win2k laptop using the SSH option (SSH 2 with compression).

It works very well! The only thing I'm a little questionable on is that I used "Samba_Server", the netbios name I set up in Samba as the name I connect to in PuTTY. Will that work in the long run, or do I need to do something else that would be new to me, and install a DNS server to establish Samba_Server as a permanent name on my local network, where IPs change dynamically....

I'm guessing its fine as is, but none of those questions are in my league to answer quickly, so I toss them out to you guys!

Anyway, quite cool to be able to configure linux remotely through normal terminal sessions.

So much to learn....

Warren

That is a good question/issue. There are some tips on making scripts to email you the new ip address whenever it is changed. That's beyond my experiences with this. Fortunately, I have my machine running on the University campus, so I have a regular dhcp address name (although the IP changes I believe).

Welcome to the infinite world of AMAZING linux tricks.