XDMCP over VPN

[Darryl Moore]

R. Wood wrote:

> 
> Check out the 'deb' installation files on the freenx download web page
> (the 'free' ones).  Installation should be a snap; configuration can
> sometimes be finicky.  For instance I've found it necessary with my
> setup to include 'AllowUser' additions for 'nx' in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
> YMMV.
> 
> Let us know how it goes...
> 

It WAS a snap! It is very much like Citrix (based on my second hand
understanding of Citrix) but obviously cheaper, and better (based on the
horror stories I hear from my windows friends who use it)

It is great that it only needs an ssh port, and I can use my regular
LDAP/PAM authentication too. As well as running separate sessions which
are suspendable so that they will be right there where you left them,
when you come back, it can also be used to pipe a desktop VNC session
which can make user support sooooo much easier without having to wait
for long refresh times due to narrow bandwidth.

Unfortunately I don't like the Samba file sharing, we only use NFS on
Linux machines. But where you can do FreeNX, you can do scp as well.

As a bonus the NoMachine windows client means it it easier for some
people with windows home machines or laptops to easily access their
accounts remotely. No need to reboot into Linux or use a VM! Windows
users can use WINscp as well for file transfers.

Now the only thing I am missing is some way to do load balancing with
several machines. What I'd like to do is have a few desktops serve
double duty as FreeNX servers, and either have a central server delegate
to these or use DNS load balancing. The issue here is that the desktops
may or may not be running at any particular moment and the system would
have to dynamically determine which machines are available and which are
not.

I could run the whole thing off servers of course, but desktops are
usually underutilized that it makes sense to use them for a remote UI
instead. It's just that being desktops, I don't have the same control
over its power status as I would with a server.

I'll save the VPN now for network-network connections.

cheers,
darryl