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5

Two users sharing the same computer

rated 0 times [ 5] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 504 / 1 Year ago, wed, november 23, 2022, 4:35:09

I need to share my pc with a friend of mine living in India.

His pc is a p4 and he needs a bit of horsepower for calculation.

Since I have an i5 I thought to let him vnc and use it but this would not allow me to use the computer at the same time.

Is there a way to use the computer at the same time with different users?

I've read Xorg is able to do this but I am not sure is the best solution nor I can implement it.

We have Ubuntu 12.04 64bit on the i5 side and Ubuntu 12.04 32bit on the p4 side.

Thank you for your kind help.

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1 Year ago

answered 1 Year ago dresuitable · Accepted Answer

You can install xrdp (sudo apt-get install xrdp) on the i5 side and Remmina (available from Software Center) on the P4 side. This will make him have access to your machine desktop.

I recommend you to set up a new user for him so you won't have problems of the kind "Firefox is already running on this machine..." and your files will be protected and separated from his ones.

To make the connection you will need to open the port corresponding to the connection type you choose in Reminna. I recommend you to use RDP with SSH tunneling (You can configure Reminna to do this alone) and open SSH port (22) on your machine. The security problem of opening this port is to consider and you should install something to block brute force attacks (like fail2ban - in software center too) and only allow ssh connections with ssh-keys, no password and no root login - configurable in /etc/sshd_config). But if you are not familiar with it, see Ubuntu SSH doc