Secure remote desktop login?

[Alan Dayley]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 4:37 PM, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> freenx - don't look any further.
>
> I don't know what your 'server' is running but RHEL/CentOS has freenx
> server available in CentOS Plus repository, Fedora has it available in
> standard repositories and I would venture that any Debian installation
> would have it packaged and ready to install.

Yes, I figured that.  Was already planning CentOS for this.

> FreeNX does a number of things...
> - encrypted SSL
> - compression for excellent transmissions, even through congested
> network space (i.e., Internet)
> - can possibly use local printers/hard drive (I presume you can disable
> this feature too)
> - supports copy/paste from to/from host
>
> The client is downloaded free from 'nomachine.org'
>
> Nomachine.com also sells their NX Server which is probably better than
> the FreeNX version but to be honest, FreeNX has always given me what I
> need.
>
> I am concerned though that you are thinking that you can give a user a
> shell on a system and prevent them from copying files to/from anywhere.
> I don't think that is a reasonable expectation. I think if your
> expectation is to really put limitations on a user, you should be using
> something like LTSP (http://www.ltsp.org)

Agreed that if a user can logon, they could do many things even if
measures are there to prevent it.  Most of these users are not
tech-savvy and would not venture to a terminal window if it was
already open for them.  The tech-savvy ones will just have to follow
policy, if the undesired applications can't be blocked.

I had not considered LTSP but will go look at it.  Thank you.

Alan