self-hosted/FOSS remote-access support gateway

phx@lemmy.ca to Linux@lemmy.ml – 49 points –

One of the problems with having switched over a number of relatives to Linux is that I'm "the guy" when they have issues, and I can't always get over to help them in a timely manner. A lot of the time most stuff is working just fine and it's just a matter of popping into the desktop and fixing a bad link or a naughty plugin that's slipped into Chrome etc, but it DOES require being able to see what they see.

Windows has a system where you can "request assistance" and then provide a code for access at which point it shares your desktop. There are similar systems where one can get a link in email and click it for support.

I'd like to find a system that I can host myself to allow users to queue up for support at which point I can pop into their system, without needing to open ports on their routers or using something hackish like forwarding a VNC port to an SSH server etc

19

RustDesk is FOSS, written in Rust and can be selfhosted.

RustDesk is pretty simple and has a fairly friendly interface. I'm hoping they bring back the play store installer though since getting relatives to install from an APK wouldn't be much fun

It's so fast too. It's my default for supporting my family computers across the country.

It's very fast and decodes in my GPU (Ryzen 7040u)

I use https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral

For this usecase. This also lets me do things like run admin cmd commands. It should be noted, however, that the Windows UAC prompt won't show up in a VNC session by default, you either need to configure UAC, or set up RDP.

Been using it for years at work. Really awesome piece of free software.

Yeah the UAC issue happens with a lot of stuff, including (last time I checked) screen-shares with Teams

i did use meshcentral before which did work quiet well.

I tried that one as well recently. It seems decent but the Android client is a tad broken (crashes on screen share).

Rustdesk?

Yup. Literally just set up a VM with that one last night to test out since a bunch here have recommended it

Windows has a request assistance function? wtf.. where is that found?
I only know Remote desktop tools and most of these work perfectly fine on linux as the client or even under Wine.

[Edit: woah, i did some rambling below here.. not related to your specific case here, but some nice information maybe]

Linux as host is where it gets funny.. bigger ones support X11, pretty much none support Wayland.
To be fair, its impossible to control mouse and keyboard under Wayland without root.
I think we now have some new desktop packages for gnome and kde which can do that, so now they need to be implemented.

But i dont see an effort being made for Wayland by the bigger providers in the near future.. the market just isnt there and there is lots of uncertainty with the featureset.

Switched to Rustdesk a while back, works nicely as client, but only picture output with wayland as host.l as of now.
And i cannot copy&paste under wayland as client.. even though it worked before..

Windows Quick Assist. you both launch it and share the code, it shares the screen even after your person on the other end reboots

Is that the same as Windows Remote Assistance? I'm guessing just a rename

It is similar, but QuickAssist is way better and so simple. If you type quickassist in the search bar it should show the app.

I'll keep that in mind next time I've got relative with a Windows machine they need help on. Thanks

Yeah super handy when I was helping my mom in another province, because she is bad with tech. She types quickassist then ahares the generated code with me, I enter it, connects right away and still persists during reboot updates. Probably the best think MS has ever done.