Waxborg

FreeNX: Full screen graphical sessions over network

FreeNX provides you with remote access to your graphical desktop from anywhere.
With the aid of FreeNX full screen graphical sessions can be accessed with even very low end cross platform clients.
This can be achieved also over poor network connections, even a GPRS modem connection works acceptably, over a 3G network the session feels like a local one a few years back.
You can suspend the sessions and resume them later. A session lost due to a network problem can usually be resumed, too.
SUSE includes FreeNX, so implementing it is easy. The FreeNX server package is installed normally on the server side and after that you run the setup script.

Personally I didn’t like the KDE client kNX, though. So I have installed the original client which is available for several operating systems.

Installing FreeNX

To start with you need to be able to connect to your server over ssh and of course you will need root privileges as well. So before attempting to connect with FreeNX make sure your ssh connection to the target box is working.
After that there are the following steps:
1. FreeNX RPM installation normally on the server.
2. Running the Setup script. This will also create a pair of keys for SSL connection.
I’m working here with a pair of a public and private key. So after installing the package I’ll command:

# nxsetup –install –clean –purge

The script returns:

Removing configuration files …done
Setting up /etc/nxserver …done
Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Your identification has been saved in /etc/nxserver/users.id_dsa.
Your public key has been saved in /etc/nxserver/users.id_dsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
18:91:df:2a:9a:a1:7a:a9:5c:68:5c:d5:17:19:07:74 root@machinename
Setting up /var/lib/nxserver/db …done
Setting up /var/log/nxserver.log …done
Setting up user nx …done
Setting up known_hosts and authorized_keys2 …Unique key generated;
your users must install
/var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/client.id_dsa.key
on their computers.
done
Setting up permissions …done
Ok, nxserver is ready.

PAM authentication enabled:
All users will be able to login with their normal passwords.

PAM authentication will be done through SSH.
Please ensure that SSHD on localhost accepts password authentication.

You can change this behaviour in the /etc/nxserver/node.conf file.

Warning: Clients will not be able to login to this server with the standard key.
Please replace /usr/NX/share/client.id_dsa.key on all clients you want
to use with /var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/client.id_dsa.key
and protect it accordingly.

If you really want to use the NoMachine key please remove
‘ /var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/authorized_keys2′
and then run this script with the –setup-nomachine-key parameter.
Have Fun!

3. Downloading the client RPM from here:
http://www.nomachine.com/download.php
installing it, and
4.Copying the key to the client and setting up the connection. After installing the server there’s a key here:
/var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/client.id_dsa.key
This key is given to the client when connecting for the first time: Advanced setup > copy/paste the key in the window “key”. If you later want to create a new pair of keys, it can be done by commanding as root on the server console:
nxkeygen
after which you again give the key to the client.

Vahis

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