Remote Control Acces simplified
 

Everytime I go to a client site I either have to configure port forwarding on the firewall and port 5900 or 3389 for VNC or RDP to work or a tedious VPN if the site has that technology in the compliance or OPENVPN but I was looking for an application like DELL support connect(you start the program and then they give you tech ID and then they can connect to you, I think what happens is that you establish a connection and then they connect remotely)Using some like this I can just tell the client to download this and install it then bam I am in. Is there an opensource version of this. thanks

have a look at using a reverse ssh tunnel: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...ml?tag=nl.e011 this way a client can run a script from their side to hit your predefined location and let you then directly connect to whatever local ports on their box are forwarded.

you might also like to look into freenx, which is a really interesting developement of vnc, in that it's not only totally tunnelled through ssh, but the ssh framework built into it starts the freenx desktop connection during the login, so no session is running at all, and on service has to start by default.

these two MAY fit together well, not sure to be honest. i can imagine the customer could ssh to you and then only provide you with a tunnel of their ssh port. i.e. your local port of, say 51234 could be remote customer number 1234's ssh server when connected. then you can just throw freenx at that and bring up everything you need as you can then tunnel back to them and bring up any tunnelled ports you wish to make use of.

thinking about it, freenx is probably OTT, *IF* the reverse tunnel idea appeals to you. as you can then configure their X server to always offer a VNC connection on localhost, as (i think) as far as the customers concerned you will appear to be coming from localhost anyway.

make sense?

That is good stuff but what if I am trying to connect to a windows machine. Would they have to have Putty SSH to me and then remote to them over SSH. I am little confused.

well putty can do a reverse tunnel too, afaik, so the concept is acutally the same.

I will look into this, once again thanks. you the greatest. Dude, I see that you are from the UK, forgive me for I failed Geography but Ozzy is from that neck of the woods so you must at least be an OZZY fan!

well Ozzy is from birmingham (the real one, not the one in alabama) which is 10 minutes down the road... but no, not really a favourite. warpigs is great an all that though.

one more question:(I promise this is the last one)

1 - ok, let say I have a client and I have them install putty. I would have them create a tunnel session to my ssh server and then I could vnc viewer into there machine given they have VNC server on there computer running on the same port as ssh? I want them to connect to my server and then I want the ablility to connect to there computer from my server securely so that I can help them out! Is that what reverse tunneling is? Remember most of the boneheads here in the states are using windows!

that's basially it, but you can use standard ports all the way. from your customers perspective it's that they connect to you and if you connect to port 51234 on your OWN computer that connection will be forwarded to their computer. the normal version of an ssh tunnel is that if you ssh to somewhere and include a tunnel configured in it, then connceting to your own comoputer on a certain port makes the connection go down ssh and leave for a given destination at the server side, that could be the machine you connect to, a machine in their lan, or even google.com or whatever. the reverse tunnel is when that exact logic still happens but it's from the server to the client, not the client to the server.

so how would I configure Putty on the client end? would I port forward anything under the tunnel section? or after they have SSHed to me would I just vnc to them? I am a bit confused. To many good times like OZZY!

I think I get it now, I would put this under tunneling under PUTTY on the clients local machine and add a line like this

and that would redirect my vnc viewer to her vnc server running on her machine locally?right?

yeah essentially that'd be it. i'd certainly suggest an additional tunnel for ssh access itself, so you have a base level way to modify these sorts of things without needing vnc etc...

ok I think I get it how about this in the Putty client

But where the Putty client would you add this statement, I cant find it?

Never mind ladies and gents here is a simple how to that will clarify everyting. Take a peap

acid_kewpie

you are mr reliable and many kudos to yourself and most of your staff.