I need to support Apple Remote Desktop and Virtual Network Computing connections on an Apple XServe running OS X, but both services listen on the same network port. I also want to tunnel the VNC connections through Secure Shell for added security. How can I set this up to support both kinds of remote desktop clients?
I need to support Apple Remote Desktop and Virtual Network Computing connections on an Apple XServe running OS X, but both services listen on the same network port. I also want to tunnel the VNC connections through Secure Shell for added security. How can I set this up to support both kinds of remote desktop clients?
With the Vine Server software from the Redstone Software Web site, you can configure the VNC server to listen for clients on an alternate network port and to accept only connections from the server itself, so clients would have to connect through an SSH tunnel. This would let you run the Apple Remote Desktop in its standard configuration while also providing VNC connectivity. On the server side, the VNC command line would look something like this: /Applications/OSXvnc.app/OSXvnc -server-rfbport5903 -localhost &. On the SSH client side you would establish a tunnel that connects the standard VNC port (5900) on the client to the nonstandard port (in the example, 5903) on the server side. Now, to connect to the VNC server, the client would establish the SSH connection with the tunnel activated, then start the VNC client and connect it to ‘127.0.0.1’ on Port 5900. You want to use the numeric local-host address at the client to avoid conflicts with IPv6 in case IPv6 is enabled at the client. This will let you support Apple Remote Desktop users and VNC connections through SSH.
