[Discuss] helping new Linux users remotely ?

[Patrick]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:52:05 -0700
lggagnon-at-uniserve.com wrote:

[...]
> 
> In the past any time a client had a computer problem they telephoned  
> us and we had to walk them through their problem, or more often than  
> not, go to their place of residence to help them out, as many don't  
> even know what panel, task bar, icon, etc. even mean!
> 
> It would be fantastic if we could ssh or vpn or whatever into these  
> machines remotely, at least to check the basic status of the box. Is  
> this even possible for a number of machines for which we have no idea  
> what IP address they have etc. etc. ? I'm not really up on networking  
> stuff so any ideas on how this might be accomplished and how to set up  
> the base clone system with ssh or whatever, would be appreciated.

I'm thinking maybe set each computer up as a dyndns.org or
no-ip.com client.  That way, you could ssh into named subdomains
instead of searching for [probably unknown] IP addresses.  Both,
iirc, offer Linux clients, probably in the form of scripts and/or
cron jobs.

The problem is, you'd have to set each machine up with a separate
account.  Cloning would still work, but then you'd have to do a
bit of post-installation tweaking for unique usernames/passwords
for each DynDNS or No-IP account, whichever you settle on [or
possibly both, if you want some redundancy].

BTW, when you say cloning, do you mean a straight
    dd if=/path/to/master of=/path/to/hd
type arrangement?

You may also have some headaches convincing all those routers and
their attendant firewalls to let these machines listen on
such-and-such port...  But you probably knew about that.


> 
> cheers...Larry

L'Chaim,

Patrick.
-- 
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a
nail.
		-- Maslow