A while ago I used to run a Remotely Anywhere server on my Wintendo box (which crashed at least once a week). Remotely Anywhere is a program that allows you to see the desktop and thereby control a PC from a remote location. This allowed me to do stuff on my home PC while I was at my cottage or at work.

One of the features Remotely Anywhere has is called something
like "Screenshot Remote Control". This allowed you to queue a series of
keystrokes and/or mouse activities and then send them in one shot to the
server (my wintendo box). The server then executes your commands and passes a screenshot of your desktop back to your browser. This may seem primitive, but it has some advantages over the normal live streaming update of the remote desktop screen. First, no applet required. Second, traffic volume is minimal. Third, SSL can be used to encrypt everything. Finally, continuous streaming of data to display a live remote desktop is often unreliable when you're behind a corporate firewall and proxy.

Sorry to be so long-winded. My question: does anything similar to what I have described above exist for Linux? I currently use TightVNC and like it a lot. When I need the connection to be secure I use an SSH tunnel. I can access my KDE desktop just fine from a regular browser window (using an applet that TightVNC provides). However, I am often at client locations where this just does not work (firewall/proxy issues usually). A simple screenshot app that allows access from a browser window would be a reliable solution. I'm hoping it already exists. Do I need to develop this myself? Would anyone else use it?

Thanks,
Apollo

Yes, you can use apache to access vnc where any browser can login securely over https.


the virtual host, redirects to https

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin admin@dcphillips.net
DocumentRoot /var/www/unsecure/vnc
ServerName vnc.dcphillips.net
ErrorLog logs/error_log
CustomLog logs/access_log common
</VirtualHost>

the redirect page..

[root@www vnc]# cat /var/www/unsecure/vnc/index.php
<?php
header("Location: https://vnc.dcphillips.net");
exit();
?>


the secure virtual host, points to the folder where vnc is...

<VirtualHost *:443>
Port 443
DocumentRoot "/usr/share/vnc/classes"
ServerName vnc.dcphillips.net
ServerAlias *.vnc.dcphillips.net
ServerAdmin admin@dcphillips.net
ErrorLog logs/error_log
TransferLog logs/access_log
SSLEngine on
SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key
<Files ~ "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Files>
<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log \
"%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"
</VirtualHost>