# Free remote control utility? Similar to webex

## cuban

Hey all, recently alot of companies have starting using webex to do remote control sessions of customers in order to help with administration.

Webex is very cool, but also quite pricey. The advantages are that it can be installed over the web, does not require any firewall reconfiguration and can be terminated/activated only by the remote user. 

Anything avaliable like this or will I have to shell out for webex?

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## tagwar

the hard way to do things would be to have your customer set up a ssh channel. You could do a remote port forwarding and run vnc through it. If you do that with a preconfigured putty and ssh keys, sending the shell to a "you cant do nothing"-chroot or something, it would be quite secure and easy for your customer. And its free.. not only as in freedom, but as in beer..  :Wink: 

I dunno what this webex thingy does, but I'm quite sure, that tunneling the stuff through ssh would be a good idea.. heard about companies (a big unnamed german medical-software house), doing their remote stuff through unencrypted vnc... that's realy bad...  :Wink: 

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## cuban

No, nothing like webex at all. Webex is great because it's easy to use for the user. I can remote control any desktop anywhere just by having them log in.

I guess I'll budget for the $300 a month.

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## tagwar

Tell your boss to pay me the 300$ for the rest of my life and I'm sure I'll find a wonderful way for your customers to be remote controlled...  :Wink:  Just a joke..

urm... well, setting up the ssh-tunnel shouldnt be such a big problem. Putty has it all built in, so you can place an icon on your customers desktop saying "Click me to be remote controlled" or something. They click it and putty opens the connection all by itself. 

I mean... i'd try it and earn the cash myself before giving it away... but it's your decision..  :Wink: 

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## static_k

almost 2 years later has anyone come across a project like this yet.

i'm also looking for something similiar to webex(http://www.webex.com/solutions/online-meeting-svc.html) where remote users can go to a website where a meeting has been setup. They join the meeting and now attendee's in the meeting have the ability to share their desktop allowing the other users to see what they are doing. The user sharing their desktop can also pass control of their desktop to another attendee.

i've been searching and haven't come up with anything besides pay services. i'm looking for something that i can setup on my own web server and point the users to that.

any ideas?

thanks.

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## peakeyed

No such app yet??

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## genterminl

Three years more, and I still don't see anything.  GoToMeeting is competeition for Webex, but won't work under Linux.  DimDim is a free (sort of - they keep trying to get you to buy the fancy package) version, but you can only share your  screen from Windows, and there are still issues with the Adobe Flash web plugin on 64 bits.

For a while, I though gnomemeeting might be it, but it's renamed to ekiga and pulled back to voip, but no screen sharing.

Anything else out there worth looking at?

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## genterminl

Well, thanks for the pointer.  I was not aware of that one.  On a fairly quick look, it seems that their "appliance" runs on linux, but they don't actually support linux as a full host - view only.

Sigh....

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## tutaepaki

would teamviewer do what you require? They have a linux client.

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## genterminl

tutaepaki:  It turns out I had actually downloaded the linux client several weeks ago, but I didn't try it out until your suggestion.  First, it's not really a linux client.  It's a windows client, packaged with a .wine directory, and they package wine (version 1.1.41) within .wine/bin.  I'll skip what I think about their use of GPL programs without making their own FOSS.  

Anyway - it (5.1 beta version) does seem to share the screen from Linux, but their concept of which is client and which is host seems backwards, since I think their original premise was remote control, probably for technical support.  The limit here seems to be that the free version can only share with one other PC, although I have not fully explored their browser only based client.  However, that one does not seem to support VOIP, and you can't give control to the other party.

Even with the single remote - I was not able to share my mic from the linux side (I was able to share my windows mic).  I'm not sure if that's a limitation in TeamViewer or if I have some audio problem - I'll try debugging later.  (I can hear my mic over my own headset, but it doesn't get sent out.)

It looks like an interesting product, but not for what I want.  (Screen sharing and  voip)

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## sxk1120

You can try juniper  :Very Happy: 

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## genterminl

I could if I  knew what it was.  All I can find is juniper-networks Secure Meeting - but it appears to run only on their hardware appliances.  Every link I find to download just tries to scan my pc for registry errors and then sends me to the juniper-network site.  Can you provide a link the the software you referred to?

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## jmhoskins

If I go to the Cisco "test meeting" site Webex works with no problem. All the components startup. On a laptop now a part of history (several years) Webex was working under Gentoo but if my memory server it required a commercial RPM that I picked up for something like $20 (guestimate). When I currently connect to $vendor for support the applet loads and starts, and the chat window opens and functions normally after about three minutes. The desktop never appears after 15 minutes time.

What is the missing piece?

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## genterminl

jmhoskins:  I have not tried Webex in many years, but as I remember, it worked fine under Linux, without anything special.  The problem for me was the cost.

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