Re: Advice Needed

[Fraser Farrell <fraser@trilobytes.com.au>]

Tom,


>
> 2) Telnet.  It does not work on my home network. 

If the machine can telnet to itself then it's probably a firewall blocking 
outside access. Telnet is considered insecure therefore some distributions 
disable it by default. Or they don't even install it by default.

Incidentally Windows 95/98/NT4/2000 all have a telnet client (so does the 
TCP/IP add-on for Windows 3.1). You need NT4 Server or 2000 Server to get a 
Windows telnet server.


>
> So unless one of you knows how to attach a simple cheap web cam
> to linux, 

Make sure USB device support is running (look in /etc/mtab for a line 
starting with "/proc/bus/usb"). Plug in the camera. Start xmovie or gPhoto....


>
> a) Run the camera continuously (or a picture a second or so) on the windows
> machine and watch it from the linux machine on the local network.
> b) Open a DOS window on the Windows machine from the linux machine and run
> programs on the Windows machine.
>
> If possible, just what do I have to install?  OK, I will install the camera
> software that comes with it.
> Now what?

Download VNC from either http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ or  
http://www.realvnc.com (latest Win & Linux versions). Read their "getting 
started" pages before you install.

WinVNC works on Windows 95 too. But I recall that USB in Win95 was bodgey - 
stick with Win98.

WinVNC needs to "accept socket connections" so that you can connect to it 
remotely. Although you don't actually need a password in -your- setup I've 
found that remote clients seem to prefer one. If you're running Zonealarm or 
some other firewall you will also need to let WinVNC act as a server to your 
local network.

Prolonged use (ie: weeks) of WinVNC on my own Windows 95 & 98 boxes seems to 
cause loss of networking. I'm guessing that there's either a memory leak or 
stack overflow somewhere, or a variant of that famous lockup-after-49.7-days 
bug. Or perhaps it's time for me to reinstall Windows on those computers. 
Again... ;-) Windows 2000 and NT4 don't exhibit this problem.

On the Linux machine, open a console window and type in

    vncviewer [name or IP address of Windows machine]

and then enter the password when prompted. After a couple of seconds a new X 
window opens with your Windows screen inside it.

Note there is a bit of delay responding to mouse movements and screen 
changes. I've found it helpful to set the Windows server screen size to be 
less than the Linux client's screen size. Speeds things up and avoids 
sideways scrolling to see all of the Windows screen. Turning off uber-fancy 
Windows backgrounds and screensavers also helps.

I've sent you a screenshot of a VNC session to my Win98 box, overlaid on one 
of my Linux desktops. As you can see, you can run DOS sessions or whatever on 
the Windows machine through VNC.

VNC has been ported to run on all sorts of things. See the list at 
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/platforms.html   There's also an 
interesting list of VNC goodies at 
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/extras.html



cheers,

-- 

Fraser Farrell

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