[PLUG] Fixing computer remotely (solution)

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Mon Mar 10 23:17:11 UTC 2014


One of the joys of Linux is that it isn't difficult to administer
a machine remotely.  My wife has a machine in her office with an
older distro.  Last night I ran updates and OpenOffice doesn't
work anymore.  I seems that a support library went AWOL. 

Rather than fix that older version of OpenOffice, I accessed
her machine over an openvpn tunnel, installed a new version of
LibreOffice, replaced the startup icon on her desktop, then tested
it on a couple of test files over ssh and remote X.  Kinda slow
accessing an X app when the link from her office is DSL, but faster
than driving down there, waiting for a break in her schedule, etc.
And a lot faster than bringing up a remote desktop, with mouse
animation trailing my movements by fractions of a minute.

I also have nightly backups of her machine on my server here;
I will be replacing her office computer soon, and use those
backups on top of the latest distro to build the new machine.  

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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