Re: [gentoo-user] Pair Programming & Non-Routable IP Address

[Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com>]

On 22 July 2010 16:08, Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> wrote:
> Hilco Wijbenga writes:
>
>> I would like to do remote pair programming with somebody on a
>> non-Linux box. It seems that NoMachine NX or TightVNC would allow me
>> to do so. Great.
>
> I prefer NX over VNC because of its efficiency, and because it is more
> intelligent, but I think it has no mode to let two people access the
> same session at once. So I (being remote) tried starting a session with
> NX, running KDE, which has a VNC feature, so the other person (with the
> session runnin in his fast LAN) could attach via VNC. But tit did not
> work well due some color bug.

Mmmh, that's disappointing. Would you mind having a look at
http://www.nomachine.com/products.php "NX Free Edition"? That gave me
the impression it was exactly what I was looking for.

>> My problem is that I don't have a routable IP address. My ISP gives me
>> a 192.x.x.x IP which is sort of nice because the bad guys can't see me
>> ... but neither can the good guys. :-) (On top of that I have my own
>> network with NAT set up so I can share my Internet connection among my
>> various machines.)
>>
>> I do have root access to a (Debian) server with a static IP with a
>> hosting company. So now I'm wondering if I can somehow take advantage
>> of that static IP address. How would I do that? What would I need to
>> set up on that server to allow my partner to reach my box?
>
> Setting a forward route with iptables would be the standard idea I'd
> think. But I'd probably just set up an SSH tunnel, like this:
>
> ssh -R :5900:localhost:5900 debian-server
>
> So when someone connects to port 5900 on the debian server, the traffic
> is forwarded to port 5900 on your machine, which would run the VNC
> session. If the session should run on the non-linux guy's PC, he should
> start the tunnel using putty or something. See the ssh man page and the
> -R option.

Awesome, that's very simple.