Vinagre is a remote desktop tool with plenty of features and ease of use for just about any level of user. It’s enjoying release 2.30.1 so it’s quite mature. In this article I will show you how to install and use the default GNOME remote desktop tool.

Features

Vinagre offers enough features to help make it stand out among other rdp clients:

• Tabbed interface allows you to connect to multiple desktops in one window.
• Favorites keep you from having to enter those connection details every time you need to connect.
• Track your recent connections.
• Auto-discovery of VNC servers.
• No need for passwords (if you so choose).

Now let’s get to the installation and usage.

Installation

Most likely, if you are using a newer GNOME desktop, Vinagre is already installed. If you click Applications > Internet and you see Remote Desktop Viewer listed, it’s there. If not, follow these instructions:

1. Oopen up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “vinagre” (no quotes).
3. Mark vinagre for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it! Vinagre is now installed.

Usage

Figure 1

In order to use Vinagre you have to have at least two workstations. Let’s take a look at connection to a Ubuntu desktop from a Fedora desktop. The first thing you have to do is allow the remote connections on the target machine. From the target machine (in this case Ubuntu 10.04) click System > Preferences > Remote Desktop which will open up the Vinagre preferences window (see Figure 1).

What you need to do is to first click the Allow other users to view your desktop. This will enable the server for incoming connections. The other options are specific to your needs and reflect security and quick access to the Vinagre application.

Once you have taken care of the target configuration, let’s go to the primary location – the Fedora desktop.

From Fedora click Applications > Internet > Remote Desktop Viewer to open up the main Vinagre window. Once there click on the Connect button to open up the connection dialogue  (see Figure 2). If you click the Find button any machine with a VNC server on your network will show up, which you can then select using the drop-down. If not, just enter the IP address of the machine and click Find. Once you’ve done that you can then control some of the graphic aspects of the connection (to spare bandwidth if necessary). Once you have set up your connection click Connect and Vinagre will open up a connection to the target machine. You should now be able to take control of said target (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

As you can see (in the remote machine) you get an alert that another user has connected to your machine.

Compiz issue

If you use Compiz on your target machine you might find your primary machine unable to control the target. If that’s the case there is a work around. To get around this problem you have to open up gconf-editor, navigate to desktop > gnome > applications > remote access, and then click the checkbox for disable_xdamage. Once you have done this close gconf-editor and your source machine should now be able to take control of the target.

Final thoughts

Vinagre is one of the easiest to use remote desktop tools I have come across. With the inclusion of tabs and favorites, it makes it a strong candidate to take over as your favorite remote tool for the Linux environment.

With SecPanel you can create a profile for each of your ssh connections so that connecting is just a matter of opening up the tool, selecting the connection you want from a list, and clicking the Connect button. And for each profile you create, you can associate numerous configuration options. In this tutorial you will learn how to install and use SecPanel to manage your secure shell connections.

Features

SecPanel hosts a number of useful features:

• X11 tunneling  control
• SCP management
• IPv4/6 support
• SSH1/2 support
• Keypair management
• Trace window

and more.

Installing

Like most modern Linux applications SecPanel can be installed by following these simple steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “secpanel” (no quotes).
3. Mark SecPanel for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.
5. Okay any dependencies.

That’s it.

Running SecPanel

Figure 1

You will find SecPanel in the Internet sub-menu of your Applications menu. When you click that entry to start up the application you will see the main window (see Figure 1) where you can start to add connections. You will notice in Figure 1 there are already profiles listed. Be default there will be none (you have to create them first.) So let’s illustrate how Profiles are created.

Figure 2

To create a new Profile click on the New button. This will open up the Profile editor (see Figure 2). In this window the only required options are:

• Profile Name: The name you want to give your profile.
• Title: This is the name that appears in the Connections listing window.
• Host: The address you want to associate with this profile.
• User: You can either supply a username that is associated with this connection or configure the connection to ask each time a connection is made.

With regards to the username: If you always connect to this server with the same username, go ahead and configure a user. If, however, you connect to this server with different usernames (depending upon what job or service you are tackling) check the “Ask” checkbox. With this configuration a small box will open, when you go to connect, asking you to first input a username.

Other important options to consider are:

• No agent forwarding: Do not allow public-key authentication.
• No X11 forwarding: Do not allow X11 tunneling (you will not be able to remotely run GUI tools).

When you have your profile configured to your liking click the Save button to save your profile. In order to connect to this profile you have to go back to the main window (click the far left icon under the menu bar), select the profile you want to connect to, and click the Connect button.

Keypair

You can also manage keypairs for ssh connections, from within SecPanel. To do this click on the Lock icon from within the main window. When this new window opens you can do things like delete hostkeys, generate keypairs, distribute public keys, add identities, and more. One of the more important tasks you can take care of is the generation of keypairs. The generation of keypairs with this tool is extremely simple. Even distributing public keypairs is made simple with this tool.  Note, however, you can only distribute your keypairs to the machines in your profiles. If a server is not in one of your profiles, you can not distribute a keypair to it.

Multi

If you have an application installed (like MultiXter or ClusterSSH) you can connect to multiple servers at once which is good for such tasks as sending the same command to clustered servers. You will first have to have a supported tool installed.

Final thoughts

If you manage a lot of ssh connections SecPanel is a tool you should certainly look into. If you are used to PuTTY on a Windows machine, you will be very happy with SecPanel.