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Since everybody is already familiar with VNC, why not stick with it when you move to hardware?

http://www.realvnc.com/products/KVM-via-IP/

Maybe you should talk to this guy.

I'm pretty sure passwords are sent challenge-response - yes, that's right (see http://www.realvnc.com/howitworks.html#5) Not the most amazing, but better than nothing. Of course, if you unlock a remote desktop then all those keystrokes are sent plaintext. Unless you tunnel it over SSH. UltraVNC allows encryption modules with it's DSM (Data Stream Modification) mechanism. As far as I know, you have to use a third-party SSH tunnel for TightVNC and RealVNC. UltraVNC seems to reject connections occasionally if you don't set the server to Poll Full Screen (but why wouldn't you?).

if you require access to the machine at boot time (IE: if your windows doesn't boot anymore, or you need to GRUb into another kernel) maybe these are useful:
http://www.realvnc.com/products/KVM-via-IP/
http://www.xceedium.com/html/products/Net_KVM.php

These toys are super sweet, but uber expensive if you are not SuperGigaUltraCorp Inc.
Anyone know of a more budget appliance? or something Homebrew ?

RealVNC took over AT&T Laboratories' (Cambridge, UK) VNC. The last AT&T versions (up to 3.3.7) were released under the GNU GPL. RealVNC is run by former AT&T Labs employees. This is the original VNC. They are currently developing (and starting to release) commercial VNC servers for Windows and UNIX platforms. The free version is still released with source and docs. They ask for your info when you download, but you are not required to provide any.

I use RealVNC (and occasionally AT&T's VNC on non-updated systems) for all of my remote-access-ing.

If there was no Java, then just about every IP-based KVM out there would use...

VNC, or X/NX/LBX, or even Citrix/RDP: some publicly documented and defined protocol that has good high-quality clients available for almost every platform (including systems that do not, can not, and will not ever be able to run Java fast enough to do the job), that has well understood network behaviour so it can be forwarded and proxied, and can be scripted however clumsily using existing software. The "remote display" wheel doesn't need to be reinvented, and it certainly doesn't need to be reinvented as badly as the Java KVM clients I've had to deal with.

We even have "remotely managable" devices now that are using a Java-based client that doesn't do anything more than telnet! In this area, Java is just promoting another step back from open systems back into the dysfunctional morass of proprietary protocols and badly behaved clients that you're stuck with because they're the only thing that works with your applications.

There's a few companies that provide VNC access to their KVM, but the majority just go "Oh yeh, Java, that's cool, we'll take a steaming cup of that."

Here's one, RealVNC KVM-over-IP, that gives you VNC, and includes a Java VNC client as well. There's absolutely no excuse for any KVM-over-IP vendor to do any less. Building a KVM with a proprietary remote access protocol makes about as much sense as building an OS with a proprietary network stack instead of TCP/IP.

Many questions:

Why did you choose TightVNC? Why not RealVNC, UltraVNC, or TridiaVNC?

Is it better to pay for VNC software, like Tridia VNC Pro or Radmin? Which software has video resolution scaling of the remote desktop?

What security is best? Is it good to use a VPN for secure access, or is SSH better? What Windows SSH server do you use?

What VPN hardware is best? We bought a NetGear FVS318 hardware firewall/router/VPN for a customer, and discovered that the remote administration password is openly transmitted. We found that logging out in the remote administration menu didn't always actually log out. We found Javascript errors. With the 2.4 firmware, more than one client can be logged in at the same time. That situation, two clients at the same time, would give an error message with the 2.3 firmware, so things seem to be going backward in some ways, in firmware that is already shaky. Our experience with Netgear technical support is that it is very limited. On the telephone we got someone in Tamil Nadu, India, who was allowed to practice for a short time with Netgear equipment, but who doesn't any longer have access to actual equipment. The online tech support just gave error messages. Not only that, but Fry's and Netgear arranged a rebate trick. They have a very long rebate receipt, and ask you to enter your address both at the top and at the bottom. If you don't enter it at the bottom, they deny your rebate.

Run Azureus in a virtual X session via VNC. 24/7 Bittorrent - works like a charm.

• The eye-searing white background
• The hard-to-read multi-column format (great on paper, sucks on a screen)
• The hideous Type-1 fonts
• Putting everything into a PDF just to include one or two gratuitous images
• Converting what were once plain text files into PDF (why???)
• "Unable to extract the embedded font 'ZDCCZL+Times-Roman'. Some characters may not display or print correctly."
• Grow old and die waiting for GhostView to render a PDF.
• Huge PDFs that contain scans of paper documents.

This cannot spread on its own; it must be mailed or transmitted, then opened. Once opened, it opens a TCP port, allowing the remote-controller to connect and establish control over it.

This doesn't sound new, hasn't VNC been out for while?

If you do sufficiently lock a computer down to prevent this, you often break some functionality (yes, even in Linux).

Admittedly, KDE is a fairly heavy WM, but the users like it.

If you have a URL for these services, please post it here. I know several school administrators that would be interested in such services. I have three questions:

• Who does the admin once you set these up?
• Can these be configured for session mobility ala SunRays? I know that it can be done with VNC, but can it still be done with a physical Xterminal?
• Can these be integrated with some sort of physical authentication, like smartcards?

If you are running Windows XP you can open TCP port 3389, or forward it to your machine from your router, and connect to it remotely using remote desktop (Terminal Services). The client can be found here . If you are using another OS or would rather use something more free try VNC. Personally I like Tight-VNC as it offers the ability to add jpeg compression.

I often use either of these to check my Bit Torrent downloads from work. Once you start using it you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Sometimes I find myself VNC'ing into a computer in the other room on my network at home just because sometimes I'm *that* lazy.

VNC

If it's software, you can. If it's hardware, your point still stands. You can never be sure someone hasn't plugged something in backwards, even a power cable. Sure that should be impossible, but lusers often make the impossible possible, with hilarious results.

• Abiword - Word processor, supports .doc, .rtf, GPL.
• Open Office - Whole Office suite, including a database frontend and BASIC macro language.
• Perl - Scripting language
• Python - Scripting language
• Cygwin - UNIX emulator. Can create Windows programs, reliant on a cygwin1.dll.
• MinGW - Port of some of the UNIX utilities (BASH, gcc, vi...) to Windows.
• djgpp - UNIX emulator for DOS.
• Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird - Web browser, e-mail client, IRC client, lots more.
• Filezilla - FTP client.
• xchat - IRC client.
• putty, pscp, psftp and others - Telnet/SSH clients.
• Gaim - Client for IRC/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ/AIM and more.
• gzip - Compression (usually better than .zip).
• tar - Extracts/Makes tar archives.
• bzip2 - Totally ace compression (usually better than gzip).
• Info-ZIP - Support for .zip. Good free substitute for Winzip.
• 7-zip - Support for multiple compression formats.
• frhed - Hex editor
• Ext2fs - Several programs for doing Ext2 under Windows.
• Antiword - Converts documents out of the proprietary .doc format.
• MySQL - RDBMS.
• Apache - Web/Proxy server
• sendmail - Mail server
• squid - Proxy server
• freeamp - Audio player
• winlame - MP3 encoder
• cd-ex - MP3/OGG encoder?
• gimp - Very detailed graphics program.
• imagemagick - Graphic manipulation. Provides the 'convert' utility under UNIX.
• freeciv - Civilisation clone.
• gnuplot - Plotting package.
• TightVNC - A fork of VNC, with enhancements.
• RealVNC - The original VNC.
• rdesktop - Access Windows Terminal Services and Remote Desktops.
• Nmap - Well known port scanner.
• John the Ripper - Password cracker. Does NT and MD5.

winzip
realvnc
ad-aware
html-kit
irfanview
zonealarm
kazaalite
subspace/continuum
prime95
weatherbug
google toolbar

VNC. Nothing like remote control of my box and the boxes in QA. Great for work at home; it's a bit slow over a modem, but you can do EVERYTHING over VNC.

For network shares, I use Samba on linux. Click through the "My Network Places" tree to find your linux box, select the share you wish to mount and then right-click to select "Map as Network Drive", and you will be automatically connected at boot to the share.

As for optical drive, I guess Samba is the way to go there as well.

To be honest, I agree with the comments below that point out that you have already answered your over-obvious question in the asking... use VNC and Samba.

TightVNC

Good example. You did know that VNC originated from the AT&T lab in Cambridge (England). Development and support for it is continued by the original authors, as Real VNC, didn't you?

I don't know if the last 300 comments (or so) mentioned it, but installing a remote desktop-sharing application like RealVNC enabled me to save my parents/brother's PC a no. of times.

That, and having daily scheduled runs of AV (with auto-updates), Adaware (with auto-updates) and a registry-fixer (" " ") running, fixing and closing themself non-obtrusively, aswell as making a stable Mozilla-firebird (not-fox) nightly the default browser on a MS-machine.

Let's just say that the need to train and fix has been minimalised because of this. ;-)

While this might not stop the problem, it is useful to load VNC. up on their box so you can remotely clean up things. In a lot of cases parents and children don't live in the same town, so no only do you have this problem, but you may not get to the machine for a while. Assuming they have a reasonable network connection, this can be a lifesaver. And prevents you from getting frustrated while you try to explain to them "....move the mouse to the toolbar"

One word: VNC.

You guys have heard of VNC, right?

What about VNC? That was relatively recent, and definitely a boon for a lot of us. Came from AT&T Cambridge, AKA Bell Labs.

The upcoming v4 realvnc for unix has a loadable module for XFree86 which makes it cleaner to export an existing X session.

Larry

I think you mean RealVNC

Amen! Multiple monitors are useful, but there's no substitute for having two different workstations and two different platforms in front of you. At work I'm using Solaris on one side, Win2k on the other. At home it's Linux/Win2k.

It gets even better if you can run VNC or Synergy to tie things together.

• CygWin. The Linux-like environment for Windows.
  Mozilla. Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
  Firebird. for FAST browsing.
  WS FTP Light. A FREE, FTP client that works great.
  Filezilla. which is TRULY free and does sftp as well.
  PuTTY. a free SSH client for Windows.
  TTSSH. is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
  iXplorer. freeware secure FTP client
  VNC hello!? remote controll software.
  Tight VNClike the original, only FAST.
  GNU-EMacs for Windows. just trust me ;).
  Dev-C++a free C++ compiler for those who can't afford VS.
  NetHack. as someone here said, you MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
  Free-AV.free Anti-Virus software for Windows, (mandatory these days). or
  AVG Free edition. another free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
  Zonealarm. my favorite Personal Firewall,, really!. or
  Kerio. another firewall that some seem to like. or
  Sygate. yet another firewall. whatever floats your boat.
  Boingo. to see where the closest hotspot is, hehe.
  OpenOffice 1.1 the Microsoft Office KILLER :) {really!}
  Winamp 2.x for audio/video usage in Windows, stay away from the new one :).
  Mark's Adding Machine is much better than the Windows calculator.
  SpyBot Search & Destroy The best Ad-ware / Spyware removal tool we've found, "IE is unusable without".
  Ad-Aware another spy-ware app "alas poor Windoze."
  Trillian a favorite IM, since we're all chatters @ heart. or
  GAIM since trillian hogs resources, "bad piggy!".
  Gimp image creation/editing. Who needs Photoshop anyway?
  EnZip freeware Zip Utility, Stop nagging you WinZip!!
  Iview is a great little image viewer. or
  Irfanviewone of the best image viewer out there for Windows.
  Audacity is a great little sound editor.
  Virtual Dub. a great video editor.
  cDex gotta rip those cd's for the RIAA!
  MAME for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. and finally
  XPantiSPY since XP is E-V-I-L.

And FINALLY, don't trust me! Trust the experts;

Go to the Pricelessware site maintained by the alt.comp.freeware Usenet group.
The

Here is my top ten list (in no particular order) for Windows. I'll let everyone argue about the Linux tools.
CygWin the Linux-like environment for Windows.
Mozilla naturally.... Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
WS FTP Light a FREE, FTP client that works great.
PuTTY a free SSH client for Windows.
VNC remote controll software, NOTE: the location is no longer on the ATT Labs UK site.
GNU-EMacs for Windows. I usually install it, but use Vi more.
Dev-C++ a free C++ compiler. I use VC++ 6.0, but this is free, and I think it's pretty good.
NetHack You MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
Free-AV free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
Boingo to see where the closest hotspot is. (free) you don't need the service.

We recently installed enough new computers in OUR middle school (in Bishop, CA to lower the student-to-computer ratio to 10-1.

When making the platform decision, the ability to quickly restore services if any given desktop got hosed was absolutely critical.

Using Norton Ghost, we can *immediately* re-cast the ghost image to any computer on the LAN, and restore the computer to pristine condition. This is not client-based, and can be done from remote.

Using the Active Directory for installation of redirected student folders, setting permissions on a per-user basis, locking down some desktop components, allow roaming profiles, and remote desktop management keeps our staff level manageable. This is done using, well, me.

Manpower required is THE determining factor when analyzing platform requirements. Sure, there are zealots for pretty much any OS choice, and Mac zealots will swear by their platform, and Linux zealots will cry out for how cheap their platform is, but the fact is that I have myself, one part-time network manager, and two after-school student workers to manage over 500 workstations on three physcially disparate campuses. It works well, because we automate almost everything, and despite some clear anti-MS bias here at Slashdot, Active Directory works great for remotely managing desktops to the nth degree, all from one location.

Norton Ghost is a godsend when dealing with hosed machines that would take hours for a technician to reformat and rebuild manually. It works from remote, and it works flawlessly. In combination with realVNC and Active Directory (to lockdown the app itself), we can remotely view workstations and troubleshoot from any other workstation. This is great when we get a call from one campus, but we're on another.

Just thought I'd give the perspective of a public school IT Director here in California.

Share and Enjoy,

Joe Griego
Bishop Union Elementary School District
Bishop Joint Union High School District

If you need access to your US-based computer from China, you'd be much better off using VNC, X, MS Terminal Services, or another remote-console app, combined with a PC Weasel and serial terminal server if you need console access from boot.

The point of this system is to provide a console a few hundred feet away that is functionally equivalent to a console directly connected to the computer. It seems to perform that function adequately. It is not designed to provide halfway-around-the-world access; the products I mentioned are far better for that. Furthermore, it would be a bad idea to include IP functionality in this product: it would mean a significant increase in cost, while simply duplicating features that are mostly available through Free software running on the host machine. Sure, IP encapsulation on a device like this would be great. However, it is simply impossible from an engineering standpoint to make it work via IP without shooting the price into the stratosphere or requiring an insanely high-bandwidth link.

I personally use WineX for old Windows games, but stick to native Linux for newer ones - anything that isn't native I simply don't buy (I choose to vote with my wallet).

As for needing Windows, unfortunately, as a programmer I frequently get paid for writing software for Windows (you can only eat so much pride before you need some real food) - all I did was buy a crap low end box (P3 733, 256Mb RAM - cost me about £150), install Windows 2000 on it, run it headless with VNC and just control it remotely from Linux - perfect and all with free, open source software! (obviously excepting the Micro$oft bit but Win4Lin doesn't take away the need for that, does it?)

Win4Lin still sounds like a decent product - it just wouldn't suit me. My way, I keep the actual physical touching of a filthy Windows box to a minimum :)))

There's nothing economical about a P4 laptop.

And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question.

Doesn't that same logic rule out Linux as well?

I would think that VNC or a variation of it running on Linux would solve the problem nicely with the support of multiple virtual desktop running on a single machine.

http://www.realvnc.com
http://www.tightvnc.com

Here's that link for the VNC stuff, same as the one used in the story.

Newer versions are available here (for Win32, Linux, and Solaris, anyway...a version for Mac OS (classic, either 68K or PowerPC) is at the site you mentioned, and you can google for VNC ports to other OSen, such as Palm OS).

A while ago my organization had this setting: a bunch of tiny little boxes that are designed to run only X, and have everything run on the power horse servers.

This centralized computing model saved some HP-UX licenses. It later became obsolete when we started adapting linux.

anothe roption I would probably look into is Xvnc. (Real VNC) Unlike it's Windows counter part, it allows you to set up multiple independent desktops.

I have used various flavors of VNC (don't forget about RealVNC) to support friends and family across the country. (And one memorable experience talking a new Mac OS X user into enabling SSH so I could connect and figure out where all of her disk space had suddenly gone).

I have found that the most difficult part by far is talking them through opening a port in their plug-it-in-and-turn-it-on NAT router (Linksys, usually) for whatever connection I'm trying to establish. Especially when each router has a different UI.

So, I agree that remote connections are *the* way to go when helping family long-distance, I also wanted to point out that there are more steps than "just install it and I'll take it from there."

Are you high?!?
Why would I want to pay $$ for a product that is in almost every way, inferior to a free one - RealVNC.
End Of Line

It does seem to be easier than X11, and particularly if you have some sort of mixed economy the ability to have applications running on several operating systems presented to you on the machine you are at seems nice.

A specific use for it would be as a doctor does his rounds, his desktop would be present at each wall-mounted display - using a swipe card, token or other means of identification and tracking rather than signing in separately each time I hope.

VNC lets you do anything you can do from the desktop, and things you need physical access to the hardware for are no harder with Linux than other windowed oeprating system environments based on the model worked out at PARC Xerox.

VNC: Real VNC

VNC seems to be the way ahead as screen capture is generally a very different problem to standard video capture/encoding. so using VirtualDub with Huffy, DivX, etc. would all be pretty useless for this application, as they're not designed for screen capping.

I'd check out the mailing lists at the real VNC website and maybe ask the question there. Trolling through the above archives I found a link to this, which seems like it may well be ideal (though very rough round the edges from the looks of things, I haven't had time to check it out yet).

It's basically a VNC session recorder/replayer

Linux/UNIX but as the guy says should work with CygWin. Don't think it's GPL, but an e-mail to the man may clarify what you can do with it.

You can of course get VNC for windows at the above site, or TightVNC over at SourceForge(which may/may not work with the above, I'd stick to straight VNC until you've tested the above).

Hope that helps,

here's a link for the only OS X VNC server that I know of:
http://www.redstonesoftware.com/osxvnc/

Other VNC servers and clients can be found at:
www.realvnc.com

It works, but you'd better be running a 100Mbps LAN with plenty of horsepower on both ends of the connection. OS X is a lotta GUI to be managing remotely.

To the best of my knowledge, that bit about the API calls is incorrect. Remote Desktop (gotta love Microsoft's way of turning common terminology into product names) uses the RDP 5.1 protocol, an incremental update to RDP 5.0, the remote display protocol used by Windows Terminal Service in Windows 2000. Version 5.1 adds some goodies like an audio channel, a serial channel, and better compression, but it's still basically a remote display protocol like RFB, ICA, or AIP.

VNC is already split into the original distribution from ORL (now RealVNC, TightVNC from Constantin & friends, eSVNC, which added security and file transfers (though win only) and a bunch of Pocket PC, Palm, MacOS, OS X etc. forks.

VNC is such a wonderful und useful program and I sometimes dream of how much better, securer and faster it could be.

Plaese combine your efforts. The world will thank you.

bye egghat.

VNC is a dangerous toy without security, whether that be via SSH or tunnelling plus a firewall.

VNC is a dangerous toy without security, whether that be via SSH or tunnelling plus a firewall.

If you use VNC, they are accepting donations at http://www.realvnc.com/contribute.html.

We plan to add full support for this in the standard VNC distribution. Please send us an email (here) if you have a particular interest in this. Also, you might want to send an email to vnc-list in order to coordinate with others already working on this.

Clair High - chigh@att.com
AT&T IMO/CSG Desktop UGN
Former VNC developer

VNC is now supported by RealVNC Ltd.

The standard VNC distribution now includes compression suitable for very low bandwidth connections, ala TightVNC.

You can get it from: RealVNC Ltd.