I am setting up a Linux Box for my elderly uncle. I am setting him up with Intrepid and a wireless router, but for convenience sake I would like to access his box via vinagre so I can graphically lead him through the teething issues he will have and fix other problems that may occur in the future.

I have his linux box initially set up on my network and can access it via my LAN. How to I set up the firewall rules to access his machine via vinagre over the internet? What protocols do I forward and on what port? When I run vinagre from the CL do I run it in the same format as on the LAN ie

LAN: vinagre 192.168.0.5:0

WAN: vinagre (internet IP address on uncle's router)ort number

I have never done this before but have setup to use "alternative port" but left it as the standard of 5900 and have set the "disable the wallpaper" to save on bandwidth.

Any help is appreciated.

All you have to do is set the router to forward the WAN at port 5900 to the LAN address of your uncle's computer at 5900. That also means you can simply connect by IP address without adding in a port.

VNC uses port 5900, so I'm going to guess that vinagre is a sister program to VNC. You may want to have the router listen at a port other than 5900, because there are a fair number of VNC exploits over the years that have allowed people direct access without passwords.

Peace,
JimBass

Thanks JimBass I'll give that a try.

Iain