I have been using VNC for a long time. It is an awesome solution
for many different purposes. I was just experimenting again with
it last night. VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a very cool
program for cross-platform “remote control” of computers. It is
now available with most Linux distributions, and can also be downloaded
directly from the RealVNC web site.

There are a number of reasons that I thought about posting tonight
about VNC. First was my experience last night … two cool
things. First, I ran into an issue where I had to run a GUI
application on my remote server … I was able to SSH into my server,
start the Linux VNCServer, and then connect and run the GUI
application. Yeah, I know … no big deal, but it saved me.

The second cool thing was when I was looking for a way to remote
control a Windows machine running VNC that was behind NAT on a Linux
box. I was able to use SSH to connect to my Linux box, and then
start VNCServer on the Linux box. I could then connect to it with
the VNCViewer. I got my Gnome desktop, and immediately ran the
Linux VNCViewer … via VNC. When it came up, I was able to
connect to the Windows box. I was using VNC to run a VNCViewer on
a remote machine to get across a NAT. Was was even more fun was
that I was running VNCViewer on my Windows XP laptop, to remote control
a Linux Gnome desktop … where I ran the Linux VNCViewer to remote
control a Windows 2000 box!

One fo the next things that I found for VNC is the vnc2swf
application.  Now this is cool … a way to record the screen
actions of VNC.  Yet another new discovery for me.  I’m
downloading this now to experiment with it.

My next adventure? While at Lunch today with Bruce Grant, he
indicated that he can now use PuTTY to create an SSH tunnel for VNC to
his server … this is the next thing that I have to figure out …
this would be very cool! I just went an updated my copy of PuTTY
…