[FreeNX-kNX] Easy even with Murphy

[Tim Jordan]

Matt Grab wrote:

>I setup FreeNX yesterday.  My plan was to do a presentation at my local LUG on 
>NX/FreeNX.  Since I waited till the last minute, one would expect Murphy's 
>Law to interfere with my installation.  It did, but only with my internet 
>access, and my presentation notebook not working with the projector.
>But setting up FreeNX worked like a charm.
>
>Here is what I had.
>I had a kubuntu server, running hoary, and it was updated about a week or 2 
>ago.
>In order to install FreeNX, this is what I did.
>
>I had to add the ubuntu backports repository.  I had to choose a mirror and 
>get it added to my /etc/sources.list properly.
>
>During the apt-get install, it asked me whether I wanted to use my own keys, 
>or nomachine's.  I chose nomachine's, since I was planning on using their 
>binary client.
>This installed NXserver 1.4.0-03 OS (GPL).
>
>Then I did a useradd, and a passwd change.  (Later I read that useradd isn't 
>necessary but I didn't test that).
>
>Since my demo location restricted port 22, I had to setup my server's SSH to 
>listen or port 443 as well, and I had to port forward the router to send 
>inbound 22 & 443 to the freeNX server.
>
>
>At one of my test sites, I downloaded, and installed the windows binary client 
>from nomachine - 1.5.0-103.  I told it to connect, and to SSL encrypt all 
>traffic (it didn't work without SSL encrypting it).  It worked just fine.
>
>At the demo location, I used 2 gentoo boxes.  I did an emerge freenx (or was 
>it emerge nxclient).  After I found the path to the binary (which wasn't in 
>the user's path), I ran it and was presented with the list of previously 
>suspended sessions.
>It worked great.
>
>The only thing that didn't work was resuming suspended sessions.  I'm not sure 
>why, but I didn't bother to debug it.
>
>This was a very painless exercise.  I have tried NX before, but it was much 
>more difficult to setup in the past (although it did work).  It's great to 
>see that NX has been adopted by the distros.  As distributions get the NX 
>installations painless, there will be a lot less questions about 
>installation, and a lot more people will start using NX, and it will start 
>replacing VNC - except where people need to access Windows clients.
>
>One of the people at my presentation said that at his job he was considering 
>rolling out Windows Terminal Services for remote users.  But now that he saw 
>my demo, he really wanted to see the commercially supported version.  I told 
>him that the commercial version has powerful management features, which I'm 
>sure he needs, and it has support, which I'm sure is valuable to his 
>organization.  I wasn't sure if it supported shadowing of other sessions, he 
>said that was pretty important.
>
>All in all, it was an excellent demo, and the response was very positive.  And 
>for me, the demo couldn't have been any easier.  Well, it could have been if 
>I had brought my own laptop.
>
>I hope to be able to deploy this at my job once the remote users have need to 
>access linux sessions.
>
>Thanks to NoMachine, and to the freeNX community.
>
>
>Matt Grab
>
>ps - if you didn't know, Murphy's Law is "if anything can go wrong, it will".  
>It's also been said that Murphy has other laws, for example "If you drop a 
>piece of bread that has peanut butter on it, the side that lands face down 
>will be the side that has peanut butter, but only if the floor is carpeted".
>  
>
Thanks for this write up Matt.  I'm thinking of doing a demo myself but 
I have yet  to get  any sound or  print back functionality working - and 
I know that Windows TS users will hammer me on those topics.

Best,
Tim