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Working with my home PC from afar with VNC - psuedo-update!, now with FTP/Apache
contraband
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Interacting with my home PC from a laptop with VNC interests me. Do both computers have to be on a network? If so, would running a program such as Hamachi suffice? Also, is it possible to directly transfer files from the home PC to my laptop over VNC, or would I have to use another method?
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Edit: I should also add that while VNC is the popular choice, the default XP remote connection functionality is actually better in terms of performance. They've really made some significant improvements to it; I want to say that it supports drag-and-drop file transfers but I can't be sure. Definitely worth checking out if both machines run XP, though.
Otherwise, whuppins has it right. Windows Remote Desktop works beautifully. When you connect, you can choose whether to share out drives, printers and serial ports, as well as sound. However, only the computer you're connecting to has to have XP Professional or Vista Business/Ultimate. (Can't be home, etc) There are RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) clients for pretty much every OS, including older versions of Windows, an ActiveX version, and versions for Linux, MacOS and others.
Edit: to explain the drive sharing, if you choose to share drives when connecting, they'll show up in Windows Explorer on the host PC as additional drives, so you can drag and drop files to/from these drives. However, transfer rates are generally pretty slow, since bandwidth is also being used to display the remote computer, etc. You can drop video display quality, etc, before you connect to help speed things up.
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?
I had the option to enable/disable power on by an RTC Alarm, external modems, or a PCI device. I also could choose a PS/2 mouse or keyboard, but I don't think they'd be of much use in this situation. Are any of those devices what I'm looking for?
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?
Since you're on a mac, you'd only need to download RDC - but then you set up the home PC to accept SSH connections, and you can connect securely to the box remotely. It also enables you to use scp to transfer files securely as well.
SSH includes encryption and compression (and also has other security features).
Personally I like TightVNC (seems a bit faster) - but your taste my vary.
If your running MacOSX at home then you should be able to build SSHD on it (since it's unix based).
If running windows, you could can versions of sshd "natively", but like the above poster said; cygwin/ssh is probably the easiest way to build it.
SSH is also good for [secure and fast] remote transfer of files. Use scp (on Unix/OSX) or FileZilla (on Windows).
I just wouldn't trust moving any information over the connection that you wouldn't be horrified if the world saw.
Then - from your remote machine - you're going to add something like this to your .ssh/config:
Host home
<tab>Hostname http://yourname.no-ip.com
<tab>User <username>
<tab>ForwardAgent yes
<tab>Port <22 - but you could change it if you wanted to be safer and run on a non-standard port.>
<tab>LocalForward 3389 home:3389 # (The RDC port, replace with 5900 for VNC)
<tab>Protocol 2
From there - all you have to do to start it up is open your terminal, type 'ssh home' - and you'll be prompted for your password. Once done, just point your RDC at localhost:3389, and you're off to the races.
You'll want to set your router to disallow access to anything on port 3389 - since you'll be running the server on that port - but you'll be forwarding through ssh, so it won't cause problems for you.
edit: I'm still a little new about "network services," so setting it up to run and accept connections with a preset username/password isn't exactly obvious to me... I'll do some Googling.
In your Users directory is your home folder. In your home folder, there is a hidden folder called .ssh. (The leading . denotes hidden-nature) Within that folder is a file called config, that holds settings for the different hosts (remote computers) you want to connect to with ssh. It's basically a shortcut - the end result is that you have to type only "ssh home" to connect, instead of "ssh -l Username -p Port -R 3389:3389 http://yourname.no-ip.com" - you're just saving your preferences for later.
Setting up Remote Desktop is easy.
Setting up ssh on your remote machine is also easy, but a bit more keystrokes.
This guide will show you how to enable FTP.
edit: So now it looks like I want to use Apache. Would this solve my problem? Even if it's overkill for what I want to do, I would feel very accomplished if I configured it correctly...
Cygwin would also work - it comes packaged with the scp utility to copy files.
It would also allow you to tunnel your connection through ssh for security and an overall feeling of haxorness.
Note that this was my original suggestion ;D.
[edit] And you can secure the RDP connection by requiring the connecting client to use a password as well as encrypting the traffic. Decent guide for XP can be found here.