From: Jim Rippon Sent: 18 July 2005 16:28 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

x11vnc sounds like just what I want, ta for the tip Jim.

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

yes, good idea, ta once more :o)

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.

yes another good point, actually the x11vnc site talks about how to use ssh. I'll read up on it.

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

great, just the sort of feedback I was hoping for, thanks Jim.

Regards,

Keith ____________ TWICE, adv. - Once too often. - Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary