I’ve got to say, one of the things I really like about linux are the myriad of options for remotely administering a system. SSH is the one I use the most, but for the graphical you have x (especially on the LAN), nxserver (which is a compressed and optionally encrypted wrapper of the X protocol….), vnc can be used, although as I’ve noted in the prior articles one problem with either nxserver, X or vnc is that you can’t by default connect to a running X session. x0rfbserver CAN, but only if a user is logged in (as far as I know….) I found an interesting trick with x11vnc that let’s you run it even if the system is at the greeter. (the login screen for X).
Category: Linux Tech Support
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x11vnc recompiled to be as widely compatible as possible…
As I said in the earlier posts, I was essentially looking for a “Single click” solution for linux VNC remote desktop support. A solution that doesn’t require the remote support client to change firewall settings, install software, etc. What I’ve settled on is closer to a single cut and paste solution, which is fairly simple. The next problem I had was compatibility of the x11vnc binary. The first problem was the xfixes library not being a part of Mandrake 10.0, then xdamage, xrender, xrandr – none of those libraries were found… so, I started looking at the compile options for x11vnc (and the optimization, because I wanted a smaller file size.)
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Remote Tech Support with x11vnc and wrapper script
So, the idea is that I wanted something “like” the Ultranvnc Single Click download, only for linux. The main idea being is that if someone is looking for a bit of desktop tech support on linux, we don’t need to be giving instructions for 5 different package managers, or source compilation, or anything more than MAYBE something to cut and paste. In fact, something like this…. wget http://www.mysite.com/remote-support && sh remote-support could be easily pasted into a console window (which hopefully we can give instructions on finding), or a run command in kde for instance. Then the remote-support script should do the rest. *(By the way, the script doesn’t have to be chmod’ed to executable when we use sh to invoke it…)
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Remote Tech Support using VNC (Ultravnc SC and x11vnc+wrapper script)
Ok, some time back I’d done a writeup on UltraVNC SC, which is a nice customizable (windows version) VNC server that essentially let’s someone doing remote support build their own downloadable .exe that runs and automatically tries to make a direct connection to a “listening” vnc viewer. It’s good for helpdesk environments as an easy download and run, and I’ve done some trials at using it over the internet with some of my existing computer service customers. Very soon, I’ll be adding a page and information about Remote Tech support services using this same method. I have run into some problems with it though. There are multiple advantages to this approach though (the main being NO firewall config for the user needing remote support – all firewall config is done at the “support center” end. Another advantage being that it’s “hardcoded” to connect to a specific given address and if that fails it gives up and uninstalls itself. The last advantage being that it completely uninstalls after a successful session as well. (Well, technically it never “installs” to begin with.))
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Firefox 1.5.0.4 RPMS for Mandriva 2006
Just an update to let you know I’ve recompiled the src rpm’s from Cooker for Mozilla 1.5.0.4 (For Mandriva 2006) and am uploading them to a subdirectory in http://www.averyjparker.com/wp-content/downloads/firefox/. (Look for the Mozilla-Firefox-1.5.0.4 subdirectory… thought it would be fairly obvious.) Anyway, I’ve put the src rpm in a subdirectory mysteriously named src… and the devel rpms in their own directory. As always the rpms are without guarantee/warranty expressed or implied. They’ve worked for me (I’m typing this now from 1.5.0.4 under Mandriva…) If you find them useful – great. Updating this and this post to reflect updates.
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Konqueror and Google Maps
After I did my “Kiosk” upgrade to KDE 3.5.2 I was really interested to see if Konqueror would finally work with Google Maps, of course, the problem isn’t with Konqueror it’s with the browser detection. Konqueror uses something called khtml to render web pages. It’s really a fairly good/standards compliant ACID test passing engine. So much so that Apple thought they would base Safari on it. The problem is that some websites recognize “Safari” in the User agent and say, “sorry, we don’t support you” if the browser user agent claims Konqueror….
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Nugache the latest in bot-net technology… and why you should care about botnets…
To show you where the threat with bot networks is going there’s a story today on Nugache (Symantec summary) which is a bot that takes advantage of a number of clever tricks to avoid having the whole bot net shut down, allow command and control on an encrypted channel and essentially have no “human readable strings” in any of it’s communications. The encryption of it’s connections makes it harder for IDS to catch it (as they rely on signatures of traffic.
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Open Source Java and Linux distros redistributing java
For years, the call has been to open source Java…. it appears that day is, well… coming. Not at hand yet, but for startersJava can now be bundled with Linux distributions…. and is looking for advice on how to get from where they are to open source Java. So it sounds like they’re enlisting advice from developers on this and the day will at least be coming that Java will be open source.
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Detecting Rootkits on a Linux machine
Rootkits are a piece (or pieces) of software that someone can be used once a system is compromised to a) regain access to a system and b) remove traces of a compromise and c) many times hide itself. There are some tools for linux based systems that can be run to detect traces of rootkits and probably the best known is a tool called chkrootkit. I’ve know of it for what seems like years now and it can run a relatively quick test for traces of a wide range of KNOWN linux rootkits.
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Sandbox your browser on a linux system
While I was reading about browser sandboxing coming up in Vista and musing about how easy or difficult it would be to sandbox OTHER 3rd party applications, I found a comment on a ZDNet post that I think I’ll just copy directly (of course, giving credit to the poster…) Of course, with the user seperation under linux, individual users have NO access to other users folders by default. ONLY the administrator can access individual user folders. So, you obviously don’t want to run a web browser as the administrator (root), but you could setup another user account to run your web browser under if you’re particularly concerned about isolating it from NOT just the system files, but YOUR files as well.