[NBLUG/talk] How to access my home computer remotely

E Frank Ball III frankb at frankb.us
Tue Dec 28 18:33:16 PST 2010


On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 05:12:57PM -0800, Roger House wrote:
 > I'm currently running Ubuntu 10.04 on my computer at home, and I'll soon
 > need to access this computer from sites away from home.  I'm hoping that
 > the access from afar will allow me to drive the home computer more or less
 > as if I were sitting in front of it.  I will probably be using a
 > laptop when
 > away from home, and it may be running some version of Windows; I do not yet
 > know if I will have the option to run Ubuntu on the laptop.


Roger,

Remote access is easy, but "access from afar will allow me to drive the
home computer more or less as if I were sitting in front of it."
requires serious bandwidth (10s of MB), which you probably don't have
from home.  My remote access is mostly ssh from terminals, exporting
graphics only when I have too.



 > I would very much appreciate detailed instructions on how to go about this.
 > Of course, I'll need to leave my home computer running when I'm at a remote
 > site.  But, what programs should be installed on the home computer?  What
 > permissions should be set up so access from a remote site is allowed?  What
 > software is needed on the remote laptop?  How do I make the connection from
 > the remote computer to the home computer?  Will I have issues with IP
 > addresses?  I use Comcast with a cable modem and a router.  I know
 > the router
 > provides a local IP address for the home computer, but it seems that the
 > remote computer needs more than this.


I don't know anything about your router, but it should be configurable
to port forward select services to your desktop machine.  My router is
an old Linux box and I use shorewall as a firewall/router application,
but most people use one of the many consumer router appliances on the
market.  ssh uses port 22/tcp.  You will need the ssh server installed
and running on the desktop.

You can access your machine via the IP address of your router, but
that's not very convenient.  There are a number of places that will
setup dynamic IP DNS hosting for free:
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=dynamic+dns

I host my own DNS, so I haven't tried any of these services.  I have
scripts that run via cron to monitor my IP for change, and update my DNS
records automatically.  Or you could just have a monitor script to email
a new IP to gmail or somewhere it's always accessable.  If your machine
is always on, the IP won't change except for power/service outages.



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