Emma65

My mother is a newbie mac user. To be honest, she's a newbie computer user - full stop. She did inherit my PC laptop when I switched, but within a week she had crashed it. The mac she has is still running. (And guess who got it for her. I'm a good daughter.)

Anyway - her G4 Powermac is running Leopard like a dream. In fact it is much faster now than before. Still, she has a few issues. Like the other day, she couldn't get music through her speakers and I'm abroad at the time.

I asked her to accept a screen share, she did. I fixed the speaker issue and closed the screen share. She is happy as larry. But that got me thinking. Is it possible to automatically accept screen share from certain users? That would be a great help if that would be possible.

Thanks in advance.

/E

nmenaker

One way to do this, is to have the .mac accounts be the same, or at least both computers registed with the same account. I found, that I could tunnel to my fathers mac already, no accept, or even INDICATION that I was on it. I had left my .mac account on his computer the last time I was there.

Personally, I think this is a security hole.

I also use a program called logmein. which is free, and does the same thing, automatically figuring out the NAT issues, and updating the DHCP to a central server, then you just access everything with a webpage.

SpaceBass

I'm inclined to agree with nmenaker - its a huge security hole.

But, I totally understand the need and desire.
I went total nerd overboard in how I solved it, but I think there may be a scaled down solution for you.

I have a site-to-site VPN setup between my parents' house and ours. Basically their LAN and my LAN think they are connected...and they are, via a secure tunnel over the internet. Then I bought Apple's Remote Desktop software... I can use it to see all three of their macs (As well as all of mine).
About once a week I get the call "can you come into my computer and..."
They don't seem to mind the privacy issues, although I wish they were savvy enough to know how to enable and disable the access on their own.

The screen sharing feature of Leopard can also be a standalone app... its called (oddly enough) Screen Sharing and is located in /System/Library/Core\ Services/ ... once you run it (which you can also do via the sharing side-bar in the finder) you can right-click (control+click) on it and select Keep in Dock.

While I think its a bit of a security risk, a solution you might consider is to open the ports on your mother's firewall to accept inbound screen sharing requests from the internet. I have not tested it but I *think* all you need to do is allow incoming port 5900 (udp I think) and that should do it. Then you can launch screen sharing from your dock, enter her external IP address (www.ipchicken.com will tell you and her what it is)...and then it will prompt for a password.

Like I said, I've not tested it, it may require port 88 for authentication, and thats on I would not recommend opening up.

nmenaker has a few interesting suggestions as well. You could use "back to my mac" by both having the same .Mac user name or you could use Logmein....both of which are 3rd parties and I'm notoriously paranoid about that kind of thing...but they may make life a lot easier.

Finally, if you do feel like nearding out...and I mean getting very geeky... you can make it a lot more secure by only opening port 22 (or get really fancy and change the port ssh listens on) then do something called an "ssh tunnel"... there is a nifty GUI to set it up on OS X, but thats probably another post.

Emma65

I ssh quite frequently to my server. I really need to get my sysadmin to open it so I can ssh from any location. At the moment I can do it only from home as it's locked to IP. I also bounce via another server

SSH might be a solution, if I only knew how to set it up. GUI interface is so much more appealing.

At least I've taught my mom to leave her computer (and speakers) turned on so she can hear me calling on skype or ichat, wichever she has not turned off. They are both set to automatically load when she boots up in the morning.

/E

SpaceBass

Sounds like it might be the way to go then!

here is the GUI for osx
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10128

Basically you'll end up tunneling port 5900 ... you may end up needed others, but a quick Google should revel which ones. You'll need to open port 22 on your mom's router as well. If her router has the option to redirect ports, then you can make it even more secure by changing the incoming port to something obscure like 222 or 1022..but most residential routers dont seem to support that.

Sounds like you have trained your mother well! I'll watch my mom's screen when I send her an iChat message... "mom, it me, your son" ... and she clicks and moves it out of the way... "mom, you can click accept and talk to me"... and she moves it again. So I call "Mom, you remember that video chat thing, thats what that was"..."oh, I didn't know so I just ignored it"
We aren't talking about someone who is going soft either, the woman runs triathlons...but tech just ain't her thing.

Emma65

Thanks spacebass.

I also got this
http://www.getstonered.com/2007/11/a...ept-ichat.html

Haven't tried it yet but will do when I get back.

/E