Knowledge Base

I have a Linux desktop support customer! (Read: I have a friend for whom I set up a Ubuntu desktop system. It's not ideal I realize, but it's better than Windows.)

On his Ubuntu desktop, I set up Wireguard as a peer to my main wg peer on my network. When his computer is on, it automatically connects. If he needs help where I need to see his screen, I connect over ssh and forward a port:

ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900

And then once there I su - customername and start x11vnc.

x11vnc -display :0 -once -localhost

And now on my client side I run Remmina and connect to localhost as type vnc. And then I can work on the same console session that my customer sees, while we're on the phone together.

Backstory

I already had a wireguard peer set up on my network for a multitude of reasons. Adding wireguard to autostart Ubuntu is well-established and outside the scope of this document. I remember reading in the past about some way to connect to an existing X11 console session, and x11vnc is the solution for that type of operation. Teamviewer is not FLOSS, and I gave it up years ago. Before that, I used LogMeIn.