[Techtalk] VNC - Virtual Network Computing use

[Maria Blackmore]

Hi

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, BUNTER MATTHEW wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone has used or is using VNC
> (http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/index.html) to connect between windows
> and Linux.

Yes, it's extremely useful, and works well.  Using it over the internet
you might find it takes a little while to get used to because of the lag
between doing something and you seeing it happen.  If I remember correctly
you can also connect to the same computer from multiple locations, and
share the VNC session, as well as using the VNC session to share a
collegue or friends desktop so that you can both see the same thing.

> According to portico.org one can even use it over an ssh tunnel -
> interesting!!

This is true, the trick here is port forwarding, using the -L option to
ssh.
eg

ssh -L 5900:foo.bar.com:5900 foo.bar.com

and then connecting to port 5900 on the local machine, which will be
forwarded in an encrypted tunnel to port 5900 on the remote machine.

You can do this from a local windows machine using PuTTY
(http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/), port forwarding is explained
here: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.52/htmldoc/Chapter3.html#3.5

Using VNC over ssh is explained here
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/sshvnc.html


Of course then sometimes you are bound to end up with someone complaining
that "this crappy free software" is nowhere as good as Windows XP, and
remote desktop.  In this case, the solution is described
here: http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/l/LART.html

(yes, unfortunately this did happen.  Unsurprisingly the person in
question is still using VNC after some explanation of the cost of windows XP)

:)

Maria