Oct 10 2006
VPN Like Access to Windows XP Using Linux
Have you ever had the need to use your computer at work while you are at home ?
If you have an SSH server at work and you have a Windows XP machine you can run remote desktop over an SSH tunnel.
You can tunnel all traffic of your Remote Desktop client over an SSH Tunnel to your work computer.
It is not that complicated to setup, for instructions on how this works you can check this link
I had a user at work that needed to use the computer at work to access Excel files on her computer at work, with the above setup I was able to set that person with access to her remote computer at work so she could modify her files as if she was sitting infront of her computer at work.
The only problem I encountered is that Remote Desktop did not provide a way for her to print to her printer at home. Basically she wanted to print some information but the printer was setup on the remote computer. The user had a networked printer at home and wanted to print to that printer.
Remote Desktop allows you to use local printers so when you print something on the remote computer you can printer to your local printer attached to the computer. This user instead had a networked printer which made things a little more difficult.
Until I came across this tip.
You can map serial ports to network printers with this command.
NET USE LPT2 \\server\mfp /PERSISTENT:YES
her printer was on \\192.168.0.99\HP
With that information, I opened a command prompt window and typed
net use lpt2 \\192.168.0.99\HP /persistent:yes
on her local computer and then I logged to the remote computer using Remote Desktop. I was connected and then tried to print
a webpage on the remote computer and when the printer selection window came up, I was able to see the HP printer on the list
of available printers.
This solved the issue of printing locally and also being able to remotely connect to the other computer.
Hope this solution might work for you all.
To disconnect the printer use
NET USE LPT2 /DELETE