Hello nixers,
What's your remote work solution.

What do you use to connect to a machine far away, do your deeds, get things done.
Be it a homemade VPN solution, simply SSH with a terminal multiplexer, or mosh, maybe you have a jump host. Do you use VNC, or X11 forwarding, or thin clients, etc..

Also in which cases do you use those, day job scenario, or home scenario. Does the distance and the connection to the server change your remote workflow.

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As for me, I normally use SSH with X11 forwarding for specific applications that are graphical, all within tmux to not accidentally close the terminal. I'm slowly starting to get on the mosh train too.
At work I'm not in the operation team, I'm a developer, and so I only barely use SSH to test things on a test-environment server.
However, I can say that the op team uses a jump-node/firewall where every member has a specific account with ACL to specific credentials that will let them SSH into other remote machines. There are many situations where the connection is extremely slow because of multiple VPN consecutive jump points. And sometimes they are forced to use a graphical environment.

So as far as I'm concerned I'm not very knowledgeable about the topic, I've got a simple solution. I'm really interested in knowing about more complex scenarios.

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So what about you nixers, how do you work remotely?

At home, anything important or useful is either in a git repo or rsync'd to my backup/storage VPS so that my laptop can pull whatever I need on the go.

Work is a big govt enterprise, so all I can say is we have a ridiculously over-engineered VPN solution from Microsoft that, like most MS products, is great when it works but when it breaks the entire world crumbles.

i vpn into private networks then usually mosh or ssh onto the systems i need to access. i use remote desktop super infrequently. i only use tmux locally, but it makes managing multiple sessions both local and remote very seamless.

I might add 9webdraw to my workflow this year. Currently, SSH is fine.

Having the remote content available works fine. Things like sshfs have the advantage of letting you using your local tool and be only slow on network in case you open/close the files. All the time you edit the file, things are as fluid as in the local filesystem.

Although, for compiling for instance, it can get really slow.

So something to fight against network latency (it's really what it is about for my slow copper / 3g links) is to have a local editor with sshfs / 9p, and an ssh window to start heavyweight operations or shelling things around.

That's 1 window with the text editor (with each remote 9p/sshfs-mounted on /mnt/$remote), and 1 window per remote.

Things get really rather comfortable this way. I guess it is why FTP is integrated on web devs IDEs...

Multiple use cases, multiple solutions!
I use dvtm all the time with abduco, so I can easily detach a local session and reattach it remotely later.

To connect remotely, I use ssh +dvtm all the time. I have no use for any graphical application, as I only administer my remote servers with no X installed.

For work, we also have an OpenVPN tunnel that must be up before you can ssh. For some teams I also set up a machine to proxy their connection from the VPN to the production (this adds the AAA bit to their production access), which does HTTP / FTP and SOCKS proxying, so they can use their local web browser / mysql / jconsole / whatever and still have access to the production as if they were sitting behind their desk. As they have laptops, RDP to a local machine isn't an option.

i work remote most of the time - the tools i usually use are ssh, a vpn and git. that's basically it. More important than the part where you connect to a machine is (at least for me) the question of "how do you connect to the fellow humans" who are working with you. For that, i resort mostly to text messaging (be it slack, matrix, mattermost or something like that) and a good screensharing/video conferencing tool (slack/zoom) to be able to work together, brainstorm and see each others faces once in a while.

For work I work remote quite a bit. Any dev work is done in git. We have a VPN for access to the company network.

For any op work I ssh through one (or more!) jump servers. On our main jumpserver I run multiple tmux sessions to our client sites so I can easily switch between environments.

My own servers/devices use either ssh or mosh and tmux or dtach.

Most of the time I have an open local tmux and open ssh connections to servers as needed. Whether I use a VPN or not, depends on the server I want to connect to.

When I'm remote or after office-hours I use the work vpn and connect to servers from there as I'd do from the office. I don't have any need for remote desktop.

My struggle is when trying to sync files between work computer and personal machine since i don't want to sync every file but i do work or several projects when it comes to development not having sync'ed up dev databases makes working remotely on those projects more complicated.

Depends on the situation for sure.

Professional work VPN into remote infra and use ssh from our jump host from there + tmux.

Homelab stuff I just ssh + port forwarding for my various needs.

Well,

I've moved definetely to OpenBSD ( current ) on my both personal machines : an old ( but brave ) IBM Thinkpad T60 ( 32bit ) and a X220 ( 64bit ).
At the very beginning I was missing a PPTP VPN client ( there's a server at ports, but I couldn't find the client ) . However I was lucky, because the OpenBSD native virtualization service was enough to install a minimal Linux system to use as "bastion" to access the PPTP VPN.

NOTE : I heard some tales about PPTP being natively possible at OpenBSD. But I couldn't find any clue on current documentation.

I don't know much about pptp but I know OpenBSD has npppd(8) built-in to the OS and the man page says it handles pptp

https://man.openbsd.org/npppd.8

I used to use Teamviewer quite effectively but I prefer to use SSH if a GUI isn't needed. Teamviewer does take a lot of the pain out of it but once you have many servers it's not as reliable or so I've been told. It's also not open source software. I use a free DDNS to get my name host so I don't have to remember IP addresses but even then with dial up at home. A HTTP web server loads up in about 60 seconds if it hasn't got rich content. So typically I only use it to SSH into from outside the LAN such as when I'm at University.

Just using tmux at the moment for the looks, but I often use dtach for specific applications like weechat as it's more flexible with size changes and then can survive if I need to clean up the tmux session for any reason.

Have you guys looked at Apache Guacamole[1]?

[1] https://guacamole.apache.org/

It's 2020, this thread has never been as up to date as now. What's your remote work setup?

I'm personally, on a roll of VPN + SSH, sometimes using the dreadful TeamViewer for helping the operation team at work.
We use Google Meet for daily standups.

What about you?

I'm glad my pc in office is still up, so I can access whatever files are not on a share. All meetings through either google meet or MS teams, online classes ditto with assignments, tests and later exams through our moodle platform. I mostly regret not knocking together a remote plant watering solution while I had the chance.

Something else that I discovered is that it's a bother to have my email in an email client on my office pc. At least if I've had had mutt setup, I could've accessed remotely. Now I have to endure gmail's web interface.

Another effect of remote working I notice is that our department whatsapp group is more active and chatty then ever before. Seems that as physical distance increases, we look for other ways to tighten the bonds.

I only use a laptop for work (macOS). We have VPN and then bastion hosts for getting ssh access to servers. RDP bastions for any GUI endpoints that need to remain behind closed doors too (e.g. rabbitmq management interfaces)

Slack and Zoom for communicating with people.

Basically, the exact opposite of what I prefer doing for personal computing, which remains openbsd, email (mutt), irc (weechat)

We use openvpn at work, but can access our jumphost per ssh from the public network.

For some other customers I use other openvpn configurations or even cisco anyconnect. We have also a few customers giving us Citrix Desktop access.

I privately use wireguard for my private nodes.

For my old company we used apache guacamole for being able to connect to any machine from within any browser.

Slack & Zoom & Email (& IRC) for comms.

Documents live somewhere between GitHub (engineering) and GDocs (everyone else). We used to have Dropbox Paper, which was nice, but apparently prohibitively expensive.

Almost all services auth via Okta. We've got a bastion host setup to access production servers and a few services that have bad/no authN (e.g. Kibana).

There's also JIRA (sigh).

I think we're mostly pretty flexible in terms of what people use, and lots of teams kind of do their own thing.

simple anyconnect vpn connection here

Hi all

I want to open a thread regarding remote work / homeoffice and all the mental thing going on when FULLY (100%) working form home.

Do you have any problems with it? Do you like working from home? Do you hate it?

Perhaps people who were fully working from home before the pandemic can give some tips?

I, personally hate it. I need my office more than I thought. I need the physical distance from my work place. Waking up, letting my coffee out and go to my chair for work 8-9 hrs is not my thing. I also struggle more than ever, keeping distance from work now. It's always there, one seat away.

Situation atm: In Switzerland we are living our 2nd wave right now. We were 100% in homeoffice from the end of February to mid of May. And now I'm again working from home already 4 weeks. I can't wait to return to the office.

What about you?

Working from home is quite nice: I can work whenever (as long as I don’t make much less than the usual time per week) and wherever I want to. I feel much more relaxed now.

(23-11-2020, 10:21 AM)eye Wrote: Do you have any problems with it? Do you like working from home? Do you hate it?

You can keep it in this thread, we can discuss both work-from-home tech solution and general feeling.

you mean this? https://nixers.net/Thread-Remote-work-solution

uho it's merged :D

(23-11-2020, 10:21 AM)eye Wrote: Do you have any problems with it? Do you like working from home? Do you hate it?

I generally like it, but this year has been harder then previous ones.

(23-11-2020, 10:21 AM)eye Wrote: Perhaps people who were fully working from home before the pandemic can give some tips?

I've been fully remote for a few years now (2-3, a bit on and off). A lot of the techniques that I used to imrove my QoL are less viable now.

I tried to go out at least once a day, either to a shop, or for lunch/a coffee, or just for a walk. Not that much of a possibility now (well, walks are).

I also used to be alone at home, and while I don't have a dedicated office with a desk (perks of living downtown), I could move around a bit between my improvised standing desk, the dinner table, the balcony, and the sofa. Now that everyone is working from home, I'm essentially confined to the bedroom, which is less than ideal in many ways.

I've looked into renting a dedicated office space (as in a room with a desk & wifi), but the combination of high prices and the possibility of them also closing down during lockdowns drove me away.

Coming to actual tips that still work:

Structure your day. Deep-clean your workspace at least once a week (I do Monday morning, takes 10 minutes). Exercise & stretch regularly, 10-15 minutes a day go a long way. Eat well. Go out if you can. Create as much "distance" as possible between work and non-work, separate p0hysical space, separate hardware, maybe even just different login on the same hardware. Try to do things different from your work during free time (I avoid screens outside of work now). Take regular breaks and move around, works well with Pomodoro, just get up and walk around a bit during every break. Don't skimp on anything health-related (actually ever, not just during a pandemic), ergonomic gear can be pricey but tends to be cheaper than doctors/physio.

Remote work is sort of continuously on-topic, due to the instabilities of:

- power-supply
- internet connection
- water supply

that come with conflicts and war, political situation (Bangladesh once cut Internet to its population as retaliation against government protesters! https://archive.is/MgrnY ), climate emergencies, or simply folks who grew-up in area where Internet was never there, or chose to settle somewhere off-grid... or being on the go! A long journey in the bus/train every month, week, day...

What is your "deeply remote" setup? How do you face these kind of instabilities? Reach your work files? Publish and communicate about progress? Pay online... when the basics of an office supplies (electricity, internet) are not guaranteed daily? Local documentation and SDKs downloaded? A local SQUID cache? A solar panel setup? Some trick to pack water (and coffee!) in a backpack for the day? FPV drone carrying an envelopes filled with SD cards going to the nearby post-office (faster than internet!)?

P.S.: It is possible that this thread gets forwarded to a few folks in one of the situations above, so any hint appreciated!