Calling all the HEAVY hiters. VoidMan, creedon and others for support

[Bazoukas]

Allright here is what this post IS NOT. Lets start from there.

 I wont ask a "take me by the hand and show me the roses momy" how to.
 
 This is a very good chance to dazle the shit out of the Windows kiddies.
 

    What I will need is pointers on what information about my system I should give and in general some good pointers on how to accomplish the fallowing.

  In my intermediate C++ class they asked us to do a presentation of a program that we will make.
 
 Now I talked to my teachers and ask them if they are willing to do this:  Pull out one of their PCs and let me use it as a terminal so I can connect with my PC and do my Presentation using via their computer.
 Presentation will entail, to use My computer's compiler so i can compile and run the program and use Open Office to show the pseudocode.


 Now my teacher told me on our very short conversation, that It might be a bitch if i wanna use my compiler. Maybe I didnt give him a clear view of what I want.

 In plain english. I want WIndows2000 at school to connect with My linux Box and do a direct connection and do my presentation, with out using ANY of the apps that my schools computer has. I hope I am making sense here.

 My question now is this.
 What info should I give my teacher? What kind of configuration info in other words. Is there an app out there such as VNC (Virtual Network Computing, it rins on windows) that lets you connect to another PC easily with out alot of hassle?  
  If not, again, what kind of info I should give my teacher and what should I look at on how to configure my system?


  I am not obligated to do all that. I can simply connect on my server and copy and paste the code and compile it on Win2k.

 BUT IT WOULD BE FUCKING COOL IF DIRECT CONNECTION COULD BE ESTABLISHED between my computer and my school. AND DAZLE THEM CAUSE ALL OF THE STUDENTS IN MY CLASS DONT KNOW FUCKING JACK SHIT......PERIOD!!!!


 Thank you guys for just even reading this.

 George.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: bazoukas ]

[voidmain]

You have several choices but I would assume you have a good reliable connection to your home computer at decent speeds, especially if you want to do graphical presentation. Most Cable/DSL modems do not have stellar "upstream" capabilities. They may have 1.5Mbps downstream but upstream is usually limited to 128k or 256k max. Even then there are many possible choke points between your home machine and your school's machine.

Having said the above, a 14.4k modem connection is *more* than enough if you don't intend on doing any remote graphical work and only use command line stuff. You would use ssh for this (get putty.exe from http://www.openssh.org/ for the windows machine you want to access from).

For graphical work the easiest thing that you probably do is turn on the VNC server on your Linux box. You can vnc into your machine and get a remote desktop. I personally do not like VNC to remote control an X session but it will work. Another option is to install Cygwin with the win version of XFree on the Win box. You can then turn on XDMCP on your Linux box and get a graphical X login on your desktop at home just as if you were there and you can log in and get the same desktop that you get when you log in to GDM on your machine locally at home. The Cygwin method is more difficult because it requires the installation of more software on the Win client and some slight configuration of that software.

Do you need graphical access?  That is, is the app you are creating a graphical app? If it is not, everything can be done easily from the command line through ssh. Why don't you just ask your teacher if you can wipe that filthy Windows off of one of the machines and install Linux?    

Also with Cygwin you can run most of the GNU apps (gcc etc) right on the Win box. See http://www.cygwin.com/

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Bazoukas]

Oh I forgot to tell. Sorry I didnt sleep AT ALL last nigh

   I have cable. I gave the addy of my server to the students today to check out my speed and I was suprised. For cable it was very damn fast.

 This will be a graphical presentation. Thats how my teacher asked it.

 And the programs that I want to run are, Anjuta and OpenOffice. That might bog the connection down huh.

  I will try to see what happens with your programs, by connecting my laptop and Main PC with those programs, through dialup. But i understand what yo are saying about the in between choking points.

And trust me when I brought two CDs with RedHat to a student, I booted up from the CDROM and showed him the initial steps on how to set it up. I was that close to hit that Next button and erase the shit out of Windows.

 

[Master of Reality]

my cable modem has 3 mb/s up and 2 mb/s down.... odd.

Cant X run through ssh???

You should ask the teacher to isntall Linux on one of the PCs, like void main said.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by The Master of Reality / Bob:
my cable modem has 3 mb/s up and 2 mb/s down.... odd.

That is odd... and hard to believe...

 

quote:
Cant X run through ssh???

Only if you have X running on the client and a *real* ssh. You certainly can not just install putty.exe on a win box and then execute remote X apps. You need an Xserver for those apps to display. You might be able to boot a Knoppix CD and do it.  

[rtgwbmsr]

Yeah, you could boot to Knoppix and use SSH.

The prob. I ran into with this was that you can only have (by default, anyway) 1 X server client running at once. Which means that if X server is running on the server, everything from the connecting computer has to be done in text.

If you can fix that, you have a good option (other than what void said)

[Bazoukas]

Hmmmmm. I have an idea.  

  Lets say I decide to go text only, compiling and all that will be a breeze.
  Can I use Latex (its programming language for thos who dont know, and its easy) to do my presentation while in text mode, using, textural scematics with Latex?

 in other words can Latex display schematics in text? I dont care if the scematics are not full of ghey colors and eyecandy.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: bazoukas ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by The_Muffin_Man/B0b:
The prob. I ran into with this was that you can only have (by default, anyway) 1 X server client running at once. Which means that if X server is running on the server, everything from the connecting computer has to be done in text.

Huh? Having an Xserver running on the server has nothing to do with running X apps and having them displayed on the local (Knoppix) X server. If you ssh into the server and if you have your ssh server configured to automatically forward X11 then you should be able to run all the X apps you want on the client.

There are two ways you can do this boot up Knoppix and the local Xserver (the default bootup), then ssh into your home server and run any X app you want and it should display on the local X server. As long as your DISPLAY env variable is properly set you should be able to display all the apps you want. In fact Xwindows doesn't even have to be running on the server you are running the apps from.

The second option is to turn on XDMCP on your server (this is done in the gdm configuration). Then on your Knoppix side you would get out of X and start X with this command:

X -query xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Which should connect to gdm on the remote machine giving you a remote graphical login.

In fact the Knoppix way would be the best/coolest if you can get it to work. I'll boot up my Knoppix CD in vmware now and try it out.

[flap]

I don't know what textural schematics are, but if you can represent them using Latex you won't actually be able to 'display' the compiled ps/pdf document if you're using a text-only method of connecting to the server; you'd only be able to demonstrate compiling the source file.

[Bazoukas]

scrap tha man. I wanted to say simple schematics.

 Sometimes I think in Greek and talk in English.


In other words can I use Latex while in text mode and just have simple basic schematics?

[flap]

Well you'll have to excuse my ignorance, but I'm still not entirely sure what exactly you mean by schematics. Sorry. Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that all you can do with Latex from a demonstration point of view is display your schematics tex source file, type "latex schematics.tex" and then see an output message telling you a dvi file has been produced. You won't actually be able to *view* the dvi/ps file.

You could produce a pdf and then transfer it to the windows machine for viewing.

[voidmain]

I just tested Knoppix and had no problem displaying any X apps on my Knoppix booted machine from my RedHat desktop. Just ssh into the RedHat machine and type the name of the X app you want to run. Now when I ran OpenOffice in this manner the Knoppix CD must just have minimal fonts because Office did not show the names on the menus etc.

However, I also loaded up SuSe in a VMware session and did the same thing. When you connect to the server via ssh in SuSe it will not auto forward X11 requests. This means you must either supply the "-X" parameter in the ssh command line or manually set your DISPLAY variable manually on the remote machine and do an "xhost +" on the local machine before trying to start an X app. From SuSe OpenOffice started fine and all menus were present. So you might also think about using the SuSe Live CD if you want to try this method.

[Bazoukas]

I am not sure what all that meant VoidMan, BUT, I have one month to figure it out. It shouldnt be that dificult to do this with all the info you guys gave me.

 Thank you guys very much for your help, as usual.
Its time for some ass whooping  

[creedon]

KNOPPIX is the way to go!  I turned the sysadmin where I work onto it (dyed-in-the-wool WIN fanatic); we put it into his laptop which was on the company system at the time; HE COULD ACCESS ANY BOX ON THE SYSTEM INSTANTLY, WITHOUT CONFIGURING A FUCKING THING!!!  He's hooked MAJOR now!!!

[Bazoukas]

Knopixx sounds good, but for "in your face you morons" reasons, I want to use the Windos box to connect. So they will get the idea that you can do anything you want and that its not a moronoc WinShit universe.

 I tried tightVNC though that runs on both Linux and Windos and it worked prety nice.