Author: Alexander Henry Date: Subject: need a little COX inside info--rdesktop or vnc? <--humor too
I've had some problems with Cox; specifically they are too lazy to fully
bury their wires and lock down the taps in my alleyway. So one day I
sit down at the machine, and there's no activity light. I boot, check
my wiring, everything seems okay, eth0 doesn't DHCP. brrringg!
Usually the tech support person that answers is one of two varieties, 1)
tells me Cox doesn't support Linux but personally runs it at home 2)
Never touched Linux, but gives intelligent conversation to verify the
problem, 'Can you get 192.168? Can you get Google? Can you ping your
router at [IP]?' etc.
This time, I got an extremely green woman.
"Sir, I can't verify the problem until you turn your computer on"
I was in the mood. "Okay, it's booting."
"Um, what version of Windows are you running?"
"Debian Linux unstable."
"uhh, okay so is that XP?"
"No. It's not Red Hat Linux, it's not Suse Linux, it's Debian Linux."
"okay... So what's on your screen now?"
"It's stuck on eth0 because it can't DHCP."
"okay... Tell me when you get your desktop."
"Okay, I've logged in and I'm at the desktop."
"Um, do you see your My Computer icon?"
"No. I don't have a My Computer icon."
Then I noticed the light was off in the back of the cable modem.
Massaged the ethernet cables one more time... click! There's the
activity light! BAH
Anyway. My question to you all: The next time I find myself with such
a person, I would love love love to let them take a look at my desktop.
What protocol do they use to do remote desktop with those tools they
distribute on their CD's?