Organize All Of Your Remote Connections In One Application

I started a new job last week on Monday. I decided to go to work for one of my former bosses from one of my past lives. Along with my former boss, I get to work along side a former colleague. In this environment we work with multiple Windows domains.

One day while working on a project with my former/current colleague I noticed that all of his remote desktop connections were organized by domain in one easy snap-in. At first I thought he was using the remote desktop MMC snap in with multiple connections, but then I looked a little further and I saw he was using something completely different.

I looked it up online, and found that the application he was using could do so much more than just remote desktop. In fact, here is a list of all the protocols it supports:

• RDP (Remote Desktop)
• VNC (Virtual Network Computing)
• ICA (Independent Computing Architecture)
• SSH (Secure Shell)
• Telnet (TELecommunication NETwork)
• HTTP/S (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
• Rlogin (Rlogin)
• RAW

This application is called mRemote, and is absolutely free! Here is a screenshot from their page of a connection using SSH:

 

Since I installed it it has made my life a little easier in the new joint. Having to administer multiple domains can be a daunting task, so organization is key. Currently I have all of my servers organized by domain.

Do you know of a similar tool? Do you use mRemote? Any tips with it? What do you like/dislike about it? Hit me up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: mremote,rdp,ssh,telnet,ica,rlogin,http,all-in-one,organize,connections,vnc,RAW

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Access Your Computer From Anywhere

One of the most valuable things I ever discovered (Thanks to my buddy Ryan) when I was just starting out was that I could access my home computer by simply opening port 3389 on my home router (Check out this post on port forwarding), enabling remote desktop on my Windows XP machine, and creating a Dynamic DNS account.

Then I started going to a school that just hadn't gotten with the times. Don't get me wrong, I love going to Coleman College. I have learned quite a bit their, but a vast majority of their computer lab computers are still only running Windows 2000 (Only a month or so ago did they add a row of Windows XP boxes...So sad). Anyway, the problem with Windows 2000 is that is doesn't have a remote desktop client installed natively. Sure, you can download a client from Microsoft.com, but you still have to have admin rights to install it. That of course, I do not have since it is a school computer.

I still had some options though, and I'll tell you what I did for the longest time. I installed the free version of Real VNC server at home, and opened up port 5900 on my router. I then carried around a copy of Tight VNC on my thumb drive, because it didn't need to be installed, and I could access my computer that way. The only problem with that is VNC is not secure.

Now before I go any further, it is important to point out that I often have people showing me easier ways of doing things. The only difference in this case is that I sort of figured this one out on my own. You see, Real VNC (And Ultra VNC if you can get it to work right) both have the option to access the VNC server over http using Java! If you open port 5800 on your router, you now don't need to carry around a VNC client with you as long as there is a browser handy with Java installed!

What's more is you can run STUNNEL on your VNC server to encrypt your browser based VNC session using SSL! All for free!

Now when I go to school, and I am forced to use one of the Windows 2K machines, I just open a browser, and surf to my home computer!

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Print Jobs Won't Delete from the Print Queue!

Today a user called me up because she couldn't print. The problem was apparent when I went to take a look. She had a print job stuck in the queue, and the rest of her documents were lining up right behind it.

I tried to delete it, but all it did was sit there saying deleting indefinitely. What the heck was going on?

Lets get one thing straight, this is not going to be a freebie post on where to get free software, this is one of those tips and tricks. Lots of administrators know exactly what to do in this case, but do you?

Here's what I did:

1) I remoted into the print server using Remote Desktop.
2) I stopped the print service ( I like the command line method: net stop spooler)
3) I browsed to %systemroot%\system32\spooler\printers and deleted the stuck file in there.
4) I started the service again (again with the command line: net start spooler)

Bingo! The job was deleted and she could print again. Luckily I have my easy button from Staples handy.

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