Solved Remote desktop control

JozanOfAstora

JozanOfAstora

Hi!

I am not sure this is the right forum to post in but here's what I need:

I have set up a monitoring server running FreeBSD 13.1-RC5 for my company attached to a big TV screen. Xorg is running on it, displaying various monitoring apps.

I'd like my colleges and mylself to be able to remote control Xorg desktop displayed here from our own laptops, in real time and without killing the Xorg session on the big TV. I am using FreeBSD (13.0-RELEASE) myself, but others are using Windows, or Mac or Linux. I know next to nothing about VNC/RDP, I've only used net/freerdp a couple time to debug some Windows users.

What are your recommendations and what should I look into for this kind of use case?
 
I've used various flavors of VNC to do this, almost any of the clients work fine (tigervnc-viewer is one I've used for a long time). On the server side there are some choices (do pkg search vnc to see a list). I'm not sure if the X server has built in VNC now (it may I just haven't looked). You probably want to make sure you can configure it to grab the X root window/display because a lot of the servers will create a separate X display.
 
Thanks I'll look into tigervnc and I'll tell my colleges to install whatever suits them. I am still not sure server-side, net/tightvnc didn't let me grab the X root, only a separate new one.
 
On a linux box at work, I use x11vnc and then tigervnc viewer to connect from home.
I created a shell script to start it (added into the autostarts of the user DE). It's not the greatest for security, but it does work. Worst case everyone needing to connect winds up with the same password on their client machine (like everyone having the root password if needed):

#!/bin/sh x11vnc -display ${DISPLAY} -o ~/vnc.log -ncache_cr -xauth $(echo ${XAUTHORITY}) -shared -forever -nap -bg -many -xkb -noxrecord -noxfixes -noxdamage -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd -desktop "VNC ${USER}@${HOSTNAME}"
 
For cross-platform screen sharing you could also take a look at deskutils/anydesk. We are using it with a commercial license at work and I also use it for occasional support on my girlfriends FreeBSD laptop and desktop. Had some rough edges a few versions ago (/w file transfer between BSD and Windows), but overall its a great and hassle-free solution that doesn't need special firewall settings (like teamviewer) as it can tunnel through https/443.

Regarding your use case:
usually you don't need or even want a monitoring server to run a full-blown GUI. I have no idea what you are referring to as "monitoring apps", but usually you want something like net-mgmt/zabbix5-server running on a dedicated monitoring server. This also offers access via a web-frontend (net-mgmt/zabbix5-frontend) and proper user accounts as well as alerting (also via various messengers, SMS etc) and escalation.
 
mer said:
On a linux box at work, I use x11vnc and then tigervnc viewer to connect from home.
I created a shell script to start it (added into the autostarts of the user DE). It's not the greatest for security, but it does work. Worst case everyone needing to connect winds up with the same password on their client machine (like everyone having the root password if needed):

#!/bin/sh x11vnc -display ${DISPLAY} -o ~/vnc.log -ncache_cr -xauth $(echo ${XAUTHORITY}) -shared -forever -nap -bg -many -xkb -noxrecord -noxfixes -noxdamage -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd -desktop "VNC ${USER}@${HOSTNAME}"
Click to expand...

Thanks for the script, I will look into x11vnc this sound like just what I need.

sko said:
For cross-platform screen sharing you could also take a look at anydesk. We are using it with a commercial license at work and I also use it for occasional support on my girlfriends FreeBSD laptop and desktop. Had some rough edges a few versions ago (/w file transfer between BSD and Windows), but overall its a great and hassle-free solution that doesn't need special firewall settings (like teamviewer) as it can tunnel through https/443.

Regarding your use case:
usually you don't need or even want a monitoring server to run a full-blown GUI. I have no idea what you are referring to as "monitoring apps", but usually you want something like net-mgmt/zabbix5-server running on a dedicated monitoring server. This also offers access via a web-frontend (net-mgmt/zabbix5-frontend) and proper user accounts as well as alerting (also via various messengers, SMS etc) and escalation.
Click to expand...

I could look into anydesk for that matter. Indeed we are using zabbix on a dedicated server. This particular server I am building is basically just to display zabbix in a browser on a big TV where everyone can watch it whenever. A bit overkill to use a full server for this if you ask me, a Raspi would have done the job just fine.
 
JozanOfAstora said:
I could look into anydesk for that matter. Indeed we are using zabbix on a dedicated server. This particular server I am building is basically just to display zabbix in a browser on a big TV where everyone can watch it whenever. A bit overkill to use a full server for this if you ask me, a Raspi would have done the job just fine.
Click to expand...
Then why don't create zabbix users for all staff members? This way they could also have their individual settings e.g. for dashboards or alerts?
It seems you are creating a problem where you already have a working solution in place...
 
We have individual accounts already, my boss just wants an extra zabbix on a TV, can't really say why. Maybe it just looks corporate.
 
If you don't want to affect the existing screen, you can use tigervnc in two ways:
  1. Starting up a new VNC server and connecting to it in a manner where it is potentially shared with others (run vncserver as a user. You could set this as a @reboot cron job)
  2. Hooking it up to inetd so each time you connect it spawns a new Xvnc server and your session is in isolation (You can tie this with xdm and -query to launch the graphical login prompt).
Tigervnc is basically an Xserver that client programs connect to but also remote vnc viewers can connect to.
 
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