[ubuntu-uk] Remote support was Sad but true? From the Register

Rob Beard rob at esdelle.co.uk
Thu Jan 15 22:03:48 GMT 2009


On 15/01/2009 21:02, Simon Wears wrote:
> The annoying thing is, I can't seem to do that! I live in halls at 
> university, and I thought I'd try something like that to help fix my 
> mums pc back home, so I tried a few things (Gitso is the only one 
> who's name I remember) and non of them work, due to not being able to 
> use many ports on the halls internet. Which just goes go show, 
> Manchester Met uni admins are no fun :(
Is your mum's PC running on Ubuntu or Windows?

If she's running Windows (or MacOS X) you might get away with Logmein 
(www.logmein.com) which is a free remote control application.  It 
connects through the Logmein servers and has a nice easy to use web 
interface.  I've just fixed my dad's internet connection remotely using 
it.  Luckily because he had a Three mobile broadband modem I was able to 
connect into his desktop using that.

The only issue I found was deploying the application to remote 
computers.  There is a free trial where you can get it to send someone 
an e-mail and they click on the link and it automatically installs the 
application, otherwise you can download an installer and then e-mail it 
over to a remote user and talk them through installing it over the phone.

Other than that, if it's an Ubuntu desktop, could you try getting her 
router to forward port 80 or 443 on the router to port 22 on her machine 
and install OpenSSH?  You could then possibly setup a tunnel to her 
machine.  Hopefully the uni would just think it's web server it's 
connecting to.

Or your final option would probably be to pick up a Pay As You Go mobile 
broadband modem on something like T-Mobile or O2 where you pay per day 
(might work out cheaper if you don't use it much).

HTH

Rob



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