I intend to use the remote access as guidance also i.e. telling the user over the phone and then showing with the mouse etc so it will need to be visible to the customer.
I'm not overly familiar with RealVNC or VNC in general on Linux. I do however use VNC alternatives extensively on Windows (usually Ultra VNC).
Therefore what follows may or may not be 100% suitable for your environment but might at least give some pointers.
First: We almost always run the vnc viewer in listen mode at our end, and get our client to connect to that. In other words, we forward the relevant ports at our end, and the person requiring support gets the server to connect to us, not the other way around. This is more secure since we don't need to mess with their firewalls, and if anyone tries to connect to us while we have the viewer running they can't really achieve a lot (they could potentially give us access to their PC, but barring any bugs in VNC they shouldn't have access to ours).
Second: Ultra VNC has a little applet which can automate the customer end of the above into a nice click-to-connect applet. This makes the whole process painless.
Third: (This may be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your point of view): We cannot connect to them, only they to us. So they feel more secure knowing we can't get in and play with their PCs while they're not looking. Everything stays completely in their control.
I'm pretty sure that all of this is possible in Real VNC with the exception of the connection applet; a simple script could replace that.
UltraVNC is not available for Linux but the different VNC versions are usually pretty good at intercommunication so this should all work to a Linux client - I just haven't tried it.
Mark Rogers, More Solutions Ltd