FreeNX

Differences between revisions 21 and 22
Revision 21 as of 2005-10-13 10:54:23
Size: 4934
Editor: seveas
Comment:
Revision 22 as of 2005-10-19 21:30:54
Size: 4944
Editor: 82-169-159-35-mx
Comment: nxserver --adduser and nxserver --addpasswd require sudo
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 38: Line 38:
nxserver --adduser <Username>}}} sudo nxserver --adduser <Username>}}}
Line 42: Line 42:
nxserver --passwd <Username>}}} sudo nxserver --passwd <Username>}}}

[http://freenx.berlios.de FreeNX] is a system that will allow you to access your desktop from another machine over the internet. You can use this to login graphically to your desktop from a remote location. One example of its use would be to have a FreeNX server set up on your home computer, and graphically logging in to the home computer from your work computer, using a FreeNX client. This page will describe how to set up a FreeNX server and a client on Ubuntu systems, for the above example usage.

Terminology

The Server is the computer you want to connect to. This is the computer where the FreeNX server will need to be installed. The name of the Ubuntu package providing the server is "freenx". For the example used here, the home computer is the server.

The Client is the computer from which you want to be able to access the Server. The name of the Ubuntu package providing the client is "nxclient". For the example used here, the work computer is the client.

Installing the FreeNX server

We will be installing the FreeNX server on the Server machine, i.e., the machine that you want to access remotely. In the stated example, this is your computer that is at home.

Add these to /etc/apt/sources.list for hoary

deb http://ubuntulinux.nl/ /

Note: Some people will tell you to add kanotix or backports as a source. Do not do this. It is deprecated

or these for breezy

deb http://seveas.ubuntulinux.nl/ ubuntu-seveas freenx

Note: The nxlibs in this version are compiled with g++4.0 from breezy and are thus not suitable for hoary.

Update your sources {{{sudo apt-get update }}}

Install it

sudo apt-get install freenx

Unless you are overly concerned with security, you should choose the nomachine key during the install, there is absolutely NO added security risk involved in not using it. Read an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Sockets_Layer SSL] primer if you want to know the details about why this is the case

Add a user (You need to use a username that currently exists on your system

sudo nxserver --adduser <Username>

Set a password (does not have to be the same as the system password)

sudo nxserver --passwd <Username>

Defining a non-default ssh port

By default, the nxserver uses port 22 for communicating over SSH. On some machines or networks, port 22 may be blocked. For example, my evil ISP blocks port 22. So I have the sshd (daemon) listening on port 8888. If port 22 is blocked on the machine that acts as the freenx server, then you can change the default port by doing the following:

Edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Find

Port 22

and change it to

Port 8888

Edit the file /etc/nxserver/node.conf

Find

# The port number where local 'sshd' is listening.
#SSHD_PORT=22

and change it to:

# The port number where local 'sshd' is listening.
SSHD_PORT=8888

(Here, "8888" is the port that sshd is listening on)

That is, change the port number to the one that sshd is listening to, and uncomment the line.

Installing the FreeNX Client

You should be able to access your Ubuntu box from any Windows or Linux box using the free client from [http://nomachine.com NoMachine's website]. You can also embed your NX Server in a webpage by installing the Nomachine Web Companion and the Apache webserver.

This section covers installation of the FreeNX client on a Ubuntu Linux machine. For the example covered in this article, the client is the work computer.

Add these to /etc/apt/sources.list for hoary

deb http://ubuntulinux.nl/ /

Note: Some people will tell you to add kanotix or backports as a source. Do not do this. It is deprecated

or these for breezy

deb http://seveas.ubuntulinux.nl/ ubuntu-nl freenx

Install the FreeNX client by doing the following on the client machine from where you wish to start a FreeNX session:

$sudo apt-get install nxclient

Now you can execute the installed client using the following command:

$/usr/NX/bin/nxclient &

Or by looking it up in the menu

This will start the FreeNX client in a GUI, and step you through getting connected to the FreeNX server, and you will be on your way!

FreeNX on PowerPC

There are no precompiled binaries of FreeNX on this platform, so FreeNX have to be compiled from source. Sources for breezy can be found in this repository:

deb-src http://seveas.ubuntulinux.nl/ ubuntu-seveas freenx

References

FreeNX (last edited 2008-08-06 16:28:22 by localhost)