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Ubuntu Vancouver strives to offer support to residents of Vancouver (and surrounding areas) who are having difficulties with Ubuntu. Support is volunteer-based, best-effort, and without warranty.

Remote Help

It's a lot easier to teach and support Ubuntu when you can actually show someone what to do. But you can't always be traveling all over Vancouver to visit friends and family who need help. This city has indeed grown! This page shows how to install and use Remote Help Assistant (RHA), a tool that pulls together the Ubuntu pieces needed to securely share someone's computer desktop from a remote location.

There are lots of tools and techniques for remote support out there; enough that it's hard to know where to get started. The goal of this page is to help you get started. This page will be of interest to you whether you're looking for help or you want to help someone else. The reality is there's always someone you can help, because there's always someone less experienced than you. And you may also want to be helped sometime, because there's always someone more experienced than you.

RHA sets up desktop sharing for you. Initially you have to set up RHA on both the helper's computer and the friend's computer (the person who wants help). Once the tool is set up, someone who's looking for help can phone someone they know who's willing to help them, and give control of their computer to the helper with a few clicks on each side.

Note: This page was written a couple of releases back (for Jaunty Jackalope 9.04). Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10) and Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) users are encouraged/advised to seek more updated information.

Set-up

RHA is a tool in development, so installation is not quite as simple as most things in the Ubuntu world. These instructions will walk you through a GUI installation (on Ubuntu 9.04). Read on below if you want to do an installation from the command-line (Terminal).

1. Start the Synaptic package manager: System-> Administration-> Synaptic Package Manager

2. Enter your password
3. Find the "gdebi" package. The easiest way is to enter gdebi in the search box of Synaptic and click "Search" (gdebi is a GUI interface that allows you to install packages that are sitting on your computer, rather than in a repository somewhere on the Internet that Synaptic can install)
4. Click on the box beside "gdebi" and select "Mark for installation" from the menu that appears under the mouse pointer
5. Find the "ssh" package. The easiest way is to enter ssh in the search box of Synaptic and click "Search"
6. If the box beside "ssh" isn't already gray, meaning ssh is already installed, click on the box and select "Mark for installation" from the menu that appears under the mouse pointer
7. Find the "vino" package. The easiest way is to enter vino in the search box of Synaptic and click "Search"
8. If the box beside "vino" isn't already gray, meaning vino is already installed, click on the box and select "Mark for installation" from the menu that appears under the mouse pointer
9. Click "Apply". It may take several minutes to install the packages, depending on the speed of your Internet connection
10. Close Synaptic

11. Now go over to Firefox and browse to http://pileofstuff.org/remote-help-assistant/

12. You have two options. They basically install the same package, but with some different defaults. If you think you're going to be the helper most of the time, click on "deb for helps". If you think you're going to be asking for help most of the time, click on "deb for sharers".
13. Firefox will download the file. The details of this process vary depending on how you've customized Firefox.

14. Start gdebi. To do so, start a terminal (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal) and type: gdebi-gtk, then type your password. (Yes, it's a bit bizarre that you have to go to the Terminal to start a GUI application.)

15. In the gdebi menu, select File-> Open and open the "remote-help-assistant-share.deb" or "remote-help-assistant-access.deb" file.

16. Click "Install"
17. You're done (almost, see "Helper Network Set-up" below)

Command Line Set-up

mkdir rha
cd rha
sudo apt-get install ssh gdebi-gtk vino wget
wget "http://launchpad.net/remote-help-assistant/helper/0.1.3-series-helper/+download/remote-help-assistant-access_0.1.3_all.deb"
sudo gdebi remote-help-assistant-access_0.1.3_all.deb 

Note that since the file name has version numbers in it, you may have to browse to http://pileofstuff.org/remote-help-assistant/ to find the current version number.

Helper Network Set-up

The helper has to do some one-time only setup of their network. The instructions in this section are not very detailed at the moment, because what you need to do depends on the equipment you have attached to your network.

These instructions work for a typical home or small office router attached to cable or DSL Internet service. Contact us (at the bottom of this page) if you have a different situation.

You need to enable PnP on your router. To do so, browse to the administrative interface of your router. How to do so depends on your router and how you configured it. In many cases, entering "192.168.0.1" in your browser will work. Then find the place where you enable PnP and make sure it's enabled.

Desktop Sharing

A remote help session typically starts when someone calls their helper and says, "I need help. Are you at your computer?" If the helper is at their computer, then both the helper and the friend start RHA: Applications-> Internet-> Remote Help Assistant. The rest of the session goes like this:

Now you're sharing desktops.

[In Progress]

Theory of Operation

[In Progress]

Questions?

Please email lcreid@jadesystems.ca for more information and to get involved in this project.