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Remote Control Of A Linux Desktop? 22

Posted by Cliff from the who-needs-pc-Anywhere-anyways dept.
Brian L. asks: "I am developing a product for Linux that is, in essence, a source code editor for a high school audience. Is there a way that the teacher could watch the screens of the students, and even interact with them (by stealing mouse and keyboard control to demonstrate a concept, for example) I've seen (shudder) iMacs do this quite nicely, but I have seen no such similar application for Linux. How could it be done?"
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Remote Control Of A Linux Desktop? More

Remote Control Of A Linux Desktop?

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  • wow, you just really didn't get the point of the question, he doesnt want a remote control for the mouse, he wants a vnc type solution where he can view desktops on worstations from acentral workstation, and take control of the desktops.
    you fail
  • When is someone going to port netbus or back orifice to the Unix scene? That would be the solution to your problem.
    This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography.
  • I wouldn't be quite so harsh on this particular question and it is often good to be able to hear about the multiple solutions that are available for a problem, so that one can get an idea which is best. But I agree that that submissions on AskSlashdot (probably my favorite part of /.) should strive to be more interesting/sophisticated than a newbie-ish usenet posting -- which is sometimes not the case.
  • Citrix [citrix.com] MetaFrame for Windows allows the Administrator to take control of other user's sessions, with permission (implicit or explicit). I would imagine the Unix one would work similarly, but I think it's only available for Solaris.
  • Citrix MetaFrame, while a nice solution to this problem (on the platforms it's available for), is mucho expensive. Not really appropriate for a probably budget-conscious school.
  • I'm using VNC right now to type this message. Using VNC, I have complete control of my X session, even as I sit in a computer lab across campus from my dorm room. VNC is at least as good as PC-Anywhere, which we use regularly at my co-op job to control computers on the other side of the country. I haven't played much with BO, though, so I can make any comparison there.

  • Your assuming that the teacher is in the same room as the student. There is no reason that a system such as VNC couldn't be used by a teacher to monitor students in a distance learning situation. If the schools have decent network access (many do), and the desktops are kept fairly graphically simple (which they could be), it would be not be significantly more difficult to monitor a class from anywhere in the world that it would be from an administrative computer in the classroom.

  • Try xremote: http://freshmeat.net/projects/xremote/ Worked great last time I tried it (year or so ago) Pete
  • Well, there's no really, really good stuff yet, but you can control the mouse now. You can use a standard remote control with a serial device you have to build (but its pretty simple).

    Did you look on freshmeat [freshmeat.net]? All you have to do is look!

  • Is that a good solution? Remember, the post specifically said "Linux".

    While you can share desktops using the Windows VNC server, Xvnc does _not_ display to the screen. You would have to run an X server with a full-screen vncviewer on each Linux box. Not an easy way to do it. (Even then, I'm not entirely sure it will share, because I haven't tried it. Probably would, though.)
  • Nothing against Google (use it all the time), but sometimes the best thing about "Ask Slashdot" is the slightly off-topic post that clues you to something that you wouldn't have known to ask about. Besides, when someone else uses Google instead of posting their question here, the rest of us don't get a chance to learn anything because of it.
  • x0rfbserver does, though. Check the contrib section of VNC's web page. It's fully compatible with VNC (which uses the RFB protocol--the name stands for X display 0 RFB server). It works like a charm, and has additional capabilities for scripting VNC events, too.
  • Get over it, man. This guy is a teacher. His job is to teach, not to be an expert at all things linux. And, from the sounds of all the people that were clueless about x0rfbserver, I'd have to say that this topic will help a lot more people than just the teacher.

    Besides, a better question to ask slashdot would be, "How do I UNinstall BIND?" After all, BIND has had a long history of security-related bugs.
  • The fella need to steal the screen and keyboard in order to interact with them. VNC does not provide this on X. It merely allows you to get a (not the) desktop on the machine. The desktop is your own, running at it's own display it (e.g. DISPLAY=:1) and you cannot share it with others (unless you log our and let other use the VNC, but that would require all student to use VNC in the first place, and still wouldn't allow interaction).

    VNC Screens are managed by Xvnc which is an X server in its own right, simply exporting the display over a compressed network connection. It's only the Window version which allow you to control a remote desktop.

  • It doesn't? so the shared session flag doesn't work under Linux?
    --
  • vnc? http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
  • If you use the -share option then everyone one connecting to the same display will have control of the mouse and keyboard. If you don't use it then you will disconnect the current user of the display. You must use the -viewonly option if you don't want to use use the mouse and keyboard when using the -share option. You can set the options to -alwaysshared or -nevershared on the server side to override the viewer options.

    I think you can connect to display 0 and share it or you could have the students run the server and connect to it locally full screen and they wouldn't know the difference. There is also an option to do reverse connections if you set it up. This would allow the server to view the viewer's display(s). You should be able to use VNC to solve your problem but there is always more than one way to solve a problem.

    P.S. Yes I was reading the docs for the xserver [att.com] and xviewer [att.com] not the Win32.

  • Too much time spent coding skew reasoning (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06, 2001 @10:38PM (#379619)
    The teacher could stand behind the student maybe?

  • Use VNC (Score:3)

    by bconway ( 63464 ) on Tuesday March 06, 2001 @10:38PM (#379620) Homepage
    While the link was already listed, it wasn't elaborated that you can connect to any machine, and as long as you don't move their mouse, they won't know you're there except for the icon in the Windows taskbar that turns from black to white. If you have a decent desktop to run this on, you can leave quite a few desktops open in a very slick fashion.

  • Controlling a Linux desktop (Score:3)

    by Whitemice ( 139408 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @03:23AM (#379621) Homepage
    VNC is a cross platform remote control appplication, that provides servers to control Win32 desktops and run (but not control existing) Linux desktops. However, Hexonet, provides a free package to serve the running Linux desktop to a VNC client (either Linux or Windows). http://www.hexonet.de/software/rfb/ You want the x0rfbserver. Tridia (a company that repackages VNC) announce intentions to roll that into their package but I don't know if they have done it yet.

  • Re:Read the question! (Score:3)

    by Rentar ( 168939 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @04:06AM (#379622)
    Well, but there is x0rfbserver (wow, what a name) and it can be found at http://www.hexonet.de/software.en/

    It doesn exactly what he is looking for. Btw, you could also run a Xvnc for the student and a X-Server with a vnc-viewer connectiong to this (local) Xvnc. Then when the teacher wants to show something he connects to the same Xvnc.

    Wow, two solutions!

  • I hate to say it (Score:4)

    by peccary ( 161168 ) on Wednesday March 07, 2001 @04:06AM (#379623)
    But google is your friend.

    Look for "X multiplex", for example.
    There are a couple of different ways to do this, that have been around for a long time. One of them is named xmx. Another might be called xmove, or xmond. I haven't used them recently, but I did some stuff like this with XFree86.3.*

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