Wondering if anyone is aware of any software that can approximate the features of Logmein central on a Linux environment. I know there is the viewer component and we have VNC for that but there is a central component which allows on demand connection and some other things as well.

This is the list of features from their site https://secure.logmein.com/products/.../features.aspx

If you don't know of any one product, any idea as to how this could be approximated, even if you haven't done it.

these look useful - http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-logme...atives-ubuntu/

I'm used teamviewer before, less of a client / server more of a peer to peer, but might do the job.

Yea teamviewer was brought up, and thanks for the link, I had come across it before though. This actually isn't for me I'm querying as a proxy here. But Unfortunately teamviewer and the options listed on that page won't suit the needs of this individual. I'm thinking he'll need to combine a few things with some scripting to get done what he wants done. I actually only half joking suggested he spearhead an opensource initiative to create this even if only from existing components so that there is an alternative he, and others may find acceptable.

well if it's a community effort then there's a very tricky part in that with logmein there is a central point that both the client and server connect into, so that is a specific costly ongoing requirement which is a pretty rare ting to achieve on pure open source community projects.

vnc or nx over tunnel works.

If you only need files then other ways exist to access them via https.

Not sure if connectnow works on linux.

I discussed it some more with him and he really needs the central server ability so we have been bantering about using reverse ssh tunnels from clients to the server, or I suggested using a routed VPN on with like openvpn and have it auto start whenever the user connects to the internet. Then scripts could be used to set up vnc connections etc....

I'm actually looking at this from less of a ground up project but more of an integrating existing software to achieve the goal. Unfortunately the key piece would be a broker service to connect two end points P2P, that seems to be missing.

I decided not to start a new thread but to go on here.
Maybe there's some alternative which may be achieved with using SSH?

Let's imagine that a remote client is behind NAT-ing SOHO-router. The router itself uses an Internet Provider's IP address pool, I mean that the router has some private address, but all packets going from it are seen as provider's IP address(es) . Or the SOHO-router has its own IP address but it's dynamic.

On the other side there's our 'login server', let's name it this way. I need to have access (SSH and VNC or at least SSH) to the client behind the SOHO-router.
I know that an SSH-client may connect to the other PC with some options, which make it possible to achieve the client's machine (which is a connection initiator).
I also know that when we connect to some PC via SSH with -YC options, we may start remote applications on our local PC.

So I'd like to listen to different variants how to combine all this.


TeamViewer is nice, but asks to pay for it when being used often. On the other hand we try to use Cisco routers and VPN in all our branch offices, so , early or late the office will have it.
The solution I'm interested in is temporary - some alternative to TeamViewer, based on SSH (as I see it).

Sounds like you just want a reverse tunnel initiated from the client side into your local system, which presumably IS reachable publicly. once you've a reverse tunnel, potentially only allowing you to get to *their* ssh server on their client, you can then tunnel whatever ports you want to back over that, which keeps the protocols you're using for the remote viewing or whatever utterly abstracted from the remote connectivity issues.

Thank you acid_kewpie for the response.
Is it obligatorily to connect to the client from the 'server' machine only? Or the client anf me (as an IT-support) can connect to some public-accessible SSH server and then I can reach the client's machine? Or SSH doesn't provide such functionality? (I know that such a scheme needs some VPN solution, like OpenVPN or PPTP, etc, but we need the most easy solution because not only we, IT stuff, will use it. It's for our workers, they are not from IT sphere.)

yes, it's totally possible, as long as you have such a suitable system to connect to. If you both have an ssh connection to a single location, and ssh features are not restricted, then you can route a tcp connectiong between the two endpoints.

Yes, it is possible to set up such a system.

If this solution is not too diffucult to set up, it will be nice. An employee connects to the SSH server, an IT-support person connects to the same SSH server, and then an IT person connects directly to the employee via VNC or/and SSH.

What key words should i search on the net to find the examples of such a configuration?

Well the key bit is to use a reverse ssh tunnel on the "client" machine. Everything else will then follow. I would suggest minimum "client" config at the cost of tunneling tunnels, so you're only want to make localhost port 22 available from the client, then you can ssh directly from your machine to the client, via the intermediate.

You can pretty this up a lot more by using more advanced ssh_config setups where you can make all connections to a subset of hosts automatically proxy via the intermediate server, making it a transparent part of the solution from the IT guys perspectives.

These examples might help detangle the gibberish I just typed:

http://sshmenu.sourceforge.net/artic...-mulithop.html
http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=a...20070925181947

After getting the host / network specific ProxyCommand cofnig, you can also then tag on standard port forwards, so with a well written config you, in support, would run "ssh stevesmachine" and as long as they have already "dialled in" to the intermediary, everything else just happens magically, and then you'll have whatever ports forwarded and ready to use (although hopefully the only thing you actually want is ssh itself if it's administrative correctly).

BTW, I expect I mentioned it above, but I *strongly* suggest using the free nxclient from nomachine.org for remote graphical access and not VNC.

For an update, we did consider reverse SSH as you are discussing now, but I think I found a pretty decent replacement specifically for logmein it's called meshcentral https://www.meshcentral.com/