I’m going to be away from home for a few weeks and would like to access my computer (LMDE) while I’m away. Remote desktop connection would be ideal, just file transfer would be acceptable.

Is a VPN necessary, or can port forwarding be good enough for a one time use?

What software/networking recommendations do you have?

  • @qwerty@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    3•2 hours ago

    If you can rent a vps you can use it as a relay server. You setup sshd on your home pc and ssh to the vps with the -R flag.

    ssh -R 8022:localhost:22 user@relay

    As long as the connection is live you can ssh to the server via relay. If you set GatewayPorts to yes on the relay in sshd_config then it will act as an open port on your home pc and anyone will be able to connect to it over the internet with

    ssh -p 8022 user@relay

    so make sure to secure it correctly, only allow ssh keys etc. If you set GatewayPorts to no, then only clients connected to the relay will be able to connect to the server, this is a must have if you’re gonna use unsecure protocols like VNC. First ssh to the server

    ssh user@relay

    next

    ssh user@localhost -p 8022

    or one line, especially useful when combined with -i to point at the home pc’s ssh key stored on the client

    ssh -J user@relay user@localhost -p 8022

    You can also setup VNC over ssh. Add 2nd -R on home pc with vnc ports

    ssh -R 5901:localhost:5901 user@relay

    or together

    ssh -R 8022:localhost:22 -R 5901:localhost:5901 user@relay

    On the client ssh with the -L flag

    ssh -L 5091:localhost:5091 user@relay

    Now you can connect your VNC client to

    localhost:1