Had this idea for years, any help greatly appreciated!

[spliffinz]

Hello everyone,

For a while now ive been wanting to create a way for me to access my home pc and have it perform remote tasks (Namely file downloading, archiving, torrenting) without needing to keep the PC continuously powered.

Having seen the power of Linux and ssh at the hands of associates, I would like to be able to securely and discretely control my main PC with the goal of being able to seamlessly transfer files to any remote location.

My idea so far is to take an external hard drive of mine (with over 100+ gigs to play with) and partition off say 1/3 of it for a kernel. With that I want to be able to remotely: Power on my PC. Control the computer's downloads and file sharing. Easily swap files back and forth between my laptop.

Furthermore I would like to link up with the linux kernel on the Home PC and create a sort of private-ssh based vpn if such a thing is possible.
I'm not really thinking of a constant, server type thing, just the ability to easily download and then transfer files remotely time to time.

So far Ive downloaded more books than I can count about a dozen different possible topics trying to get a grasp on all this....

As far as questions are concerned, mine are legion.
-What would be the best Linux OS to choose for this? im looking for something small and discrete that can work on a laptop
-How should I go about installing and configuring the necessary software?
-Is ssh the answer to the kind of file transference im talking about?
-Would a custom Unix kernel be the best bet? Or a Unix anything?
-In terms of subject areas, what should I start reading about?


Sorry if this is a bit lengthy, thanks in advance to anyone who put up with my lack of knowledge and read everything

ill gladly clarify anything
cheers!

[Cabhan]

The main point of confusion that I'm having is with regards to powering on a computer remotely. In short, this is fairly difficult. You pretty much need physical access to the box in order to power it on. So I can't help much with that.

However, let us suppose that you have, one way or another, powered on your home PC. At that point, it really does just become a matter of sshing in with your laptop: you now can do whatever you want on that computer, including transferring files to/from your laptop (via scp or sftp). SSH is pretty much what you want as far as doing the connection: it is a secure connection between two machines. VPN is more for allowing local access to a network from a remote machine.

As far as the operating system, it sounds like you pretty much just want a Linux kernel running sshd, which any Linux can do. If you're not very experienced with Linux, something like Ubuntu would work just fine for you. If you want the absolute minimum, you could choose a more minimalist distro like Arch, Debian, or Gentoo, but these will require more effort to set up and maintain.

[drl]

Hi.

For remote power-on -- not trivial, but see Wake-on-LAN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and a reference to web sites that could help by sending magic packets at How To Remotely Turn On Computer from LAN and WAN | Raymond.CC Blog -- requires appropriate hardware, BIOS settings, etc., AFAIK, this is not rare, I know I have an old Intellistation PC that has such capability.

I recall an ad for a device that could also be used to power-on by phone, but I didn't look for that. Google might help there.

I agree with Cabhan -- the easiest to start with is ssh. Later if you need to automate some tasks, there may be more advanced methods, after you have used it for a while.

Bet wishes ... cheers, drl

[arespi]

Hi, cool idea, just to add up a bit to what others have said already
1.- You will need an address to be able to reach your home computer, so you will need a static ip or a service like dyndns, many home routers are already configured to use such a service.
2.- WOL, wake on lan, thats what you need, usually easier to get going with integrated LAN, most Dell computers I have seen have this setup on the BIOS, just need to look for the right file or packet to send to it to power up your pc.
3.- Don't lock up your mind about pc vs servers, any linux is basically a server maybe a tiny one but still a server, is the services it provides what matters..
4.- For your "portable" client, if you don't want to use you laptop with linux, well, just run a virtual machine with a small linux distro from your laptop. From it you can ssh to you home computer and use it to move your files.

Good luck

[jonyo]

had this idea for years
<snip>
I want to be able to remotely: Power on my PC. Control the computer's downloads and file sharing. Easily swap files back and forth between my laptop.

prob easiest to setup in win, like minutes, though i haven't fiddled with the wake on lan stuff,

i use teamviewer and join.me