I'm going to be away from home for a few weeks and would like to access my computer (LMDE) while I'm away. Remote desktop connection would be ideal, just file transfer would be acceptable.

Is a VPN necessary, or can port forwarding be good enough for a one time use?

What software/networking recommendations do you have?

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[–] 3 points 3 hours ago

If you can rent a vps you can use it as a relay server. You setup sshd on your home pc and ssh to the vps with the -R flag.

ssh -R 8022:localhost:22 user@relay

As long as the connection is live you can ssh to the server via relay. If you set GatewayPorts to yes on the relay in sshd_config then it will act as an open port on your home pc and anyone will be able to connect to it over the internet with

ssh -p 8022 user@relay

so make sure to secure it correctly, only allow ssh keys etc. If you set GatewayPorts to no, then only clients connected to the relay will be able to connect to the server, this is a must have if you're gonna use unsecure protocols like VNC. First ssh to the server

ssh user@relay

next

ssh user@localhost -p 8022

or one line, especially useful when combined with -i to point at the home pc's ssh key stored on the client

ssh -J user@relay user@localhost -p 8022

You can also setup VNC over ssh. Add 2nd -R on home pc with vnc ports

ssh -R 5901:localhost:5901 user@relay

or together

ssh -R 8022:localhost:22 -R 5901:localhost:5901 user@relay

On the client ssh with the -L flag

ssh -L 5091:localhost:5091 user@relay

Now you can connect your VNC client to

localhost:1

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