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

[Rob Beard]

On 18/01/2009 17:01, Ian Pascoe wrote:
> OK, looks like we've got three different strands here:
>
> - on line support
> - user education
> - diagnostic apps
>
> And personally, the last one scares me as it's a major project in itself. -
> although there may be stuff out there that could be adapted like the distro
> that ships with an app that collects hardware data; darn, can't remember
> which one does it .... it's not Ubuntu though is it?
>
>    
IIRC CentOS and Fedora do something like this, can't for the life of me 
remember what it's called though, just seen it scrolling past on boot up.
> I also believe that the on line support needs to be both a graphical one and
> a command line one - graphical to observe the user to see what they're doing
> etc like VNC.
>    
Well I guess for command line support there is always SSH.  I was having 
a play with regards to graphical support and reverse VNC.

I managed to use x11vnc to connect to my laptop running TightVNC.  IIRC 
I used something like x11vnc -connect hostname.domain.org:5500

It did say something on the x11vnc output about forwarding it via SSH 
but I didn't have time this morning to look into it further.  What I'd 
love to know is if there is any way I could kill the process with Zenity 
so that the user can close the remote session at any time?

> Actually, what do Cononical use for there own paid for remote support, if
> they have one?  Be a lot easier to use infrastructure already in place than
> try and create our own ....
>
>    
Yup, no point in re-inventing the wheel if we can get away with it.

Rob