Howto connect to your office pc

It is not possible to create a “Remote desktop connection” directly to your office PC from the outside world because of firewalls. But by following the following instructions, you can do it.

The tunnel-in-tunnel way

Introduction

Connect from the outside to the server "lilo" with SSH. If you are connected to the server lilo you can set make a port forwarding "tunnel" to the server "felix-control". Once connected with "felix-control" you can make a second tunnel to your own PC and then make a remote desktop connection through that second tunnel.

Setup the first tunnel to felix-control

Setup connection to lilo

• PuTTY Configuration
  • Host Name: lilo.science.ru.nl
  • Port: 22

Add first tunnel

• Tunnels (port forwarding)
  • Source port: 2222 (localhost)
  • Destination: felix-control.science.ru.nl:22

Connect

• You may want to save the now-configured connection
• Now connect, and login to lilo with your science account.

Search ip address of your own pc

• Now you are logged in, look up the ip-addres of your PC with the command ethergids. Search by name (e.g. "Michel") or by office number (e.g. "FX-1.16")
• remember your ip address for the next steps

Setup the second tunnel to your pc

Setup connection to felix-control

• Open a new session on PuTTY.
• puTTY Configuration (felix-control on port 2222)
  • Host Name: localhost
  • Port: 2222

Add second tunnel

• Tunnels (port forwarding)
  • Source port: 3399 (localhost)
  • Destination: your-ip-address:3389

(Here, 3399 is a random free port number, and 3389 is the fixed port number of the RDP server on your pc.)

Connect

• You may want to save this second connection as well.
• Now connect, and login to felix-control with your science account.

• You now should have a tunnel from your-pc-at-home:3399 to your-pc-at-work:3389

Connect to your pc

• Start Remote Desktop Connection
• Connect to localhost:3399

Connect to isolator

When you have set the 2 tunnels it is also possible to tunnel through ssh to the network shares via felix-control.

• Download the program WinSCP
• Open the 2 tunnels through PuTTY
• Connect to localhost:2222 with you science login eg. bryanw

• Now move to the directory /mnt/ and presto there are the mounted shares

The awesome way

In this way it's possible to do it with one connection, and two sequential tunnels.

No screenshots provided because this is advanced level stuff and you should not need them by now.

• Make sure you've setup passwordless SSH from lilo to felix-control. (hint: involves ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id)
• Make one new Putty session with the following settings:
  • Connect to host: lilo.science.ru.nl
  • Add tunnel in Connection/SSH/Tunnels: Local, source: 29981, destination: localhost:29981 (where 29981 should be a 1000 < unique number < 65535)
  • Add remote command in Connection/SSH: ssh -L 29981:aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:3389 felix-control (where aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is your work pc's IP address).
• Save and Connect.
• Remote desktop to localhost:29981 -> bingo, you're awesome!

server - computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients

Linux login server - a secure shell server available for Students and Staff of the Science Faculty.

Secure shell - a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network.

PuTTY - a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application.

Telgids/Ethergids - a phonebook for telephone numbers and ethernet outlets maintained by CNCZ.

Annexed into FX-1.14

Internet Protocol - the principal communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries.