Keith Watson wrote:
As we both have Ubuntu [Debian] based systems, I right in supposing that all I need to do is run something like;
apt-get install vncserver
on my friend's PC, and something like;
apt-get install vncviewer
on my own PC to install the software (if not part of the base Ubuntu install)?
I would suggest that if you want to be able to show your friend what you are doing (demonstrate how to fix the problem they are having for example) you might:
apt-get install x11vnc
We both have the FireStarter firewall running using the default rules. I presume I'll need to change these at the server end to allow the viewer to connect. Can anyone give me some pointers on how I go about this for a VNC connection (VNC uses port 5900 I think)?
Watch what port is being used if you are using the standard vncserver - IIRC, it will run its server on display :1, and its network port will be 5900 + DISPLAY, so in my example 5901
Also, as our dial-up connections use dynamic IP addressing is the lack of fixed IPs likely to be a problem?
unlikely, as long as your ISP is not going to block non-standard ports (some restrict you to WWW, FTP, MSN, AIM). You can find out your IP address from http://www.whatismyip.com - very easy to get a user to go here from their web browser when you are on the phone, otherwise go for a Dynamic DNS service - something like http://www.dyndns.org
Any other gotchas anyone can think of?
I would suggest looking at running VNC over SSH as it is a fairly insecure protocol straight up. There is a good amount of info on this if you Google it.
Has anyone ever tried this (i.e. Linux VNC - Linux VNC over dial-up) ? and, if so, did you get it to work? :o)
I admin 120 or so desktops and servers from here - although most are Windoze machines (I SSH directly into my Linux machines, and even XDMCP when I am on site) and I have had plenty of success doing this over a dialup. You can set the max colour depth and compression algorithms and I would suggest that you look into this as at high colour depths and no compression your session may be unusable.
Hope this helps
Jim