# Do you like Teamviewer ?



## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

Hello,

Teamviewer gets always more and more users, because they have no choice. 

What's your experience about it? Thank you


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Teamviewer will be dead soon because of their current licensing policy, AnyDesk is a good replacement, also they officially support FreeBSD.

Back to topic: Teamviewer is useful for MS Windows users since they don't have many options for remote access through firewalls etc.
Technically it's just an SSH tunnel via Teamviewer servers, you can make your own if you like.


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Wozzeck.Live said:


> this is free for personal use


It used to be: just a couple of days ago it told me that my free license expired. Period.
The older versions work, so, if you don't upgrade to new version, you can still use them, but then it will refuse to connect to hosts running newer versions.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

As soon as you need registration, cannot hold the service your own, this is not recommended. Opensource is always better - you can have free usage.


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## Rand0m (Feb 15, 2019)

I think it is a good tool for certain use-cases. I use it to update/fix my old parents computer who live in a different country. Worked well for us for the past 9 years. Personally,I won't use it for any other thing apart from that.


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

blueCub said:


> I use it to update/fix my old parents computer who live in a different country.


Yes, I used to do the same years ago, but eventually installed Linux in their computer and set up an SSH tunnel.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> Yes, I used to do the same years ago, but eventually installed Linux in their computer and set up an SSH tunnel.



Why not NetBSD, OpenBSD or FreeBSD?


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> Why not NetBSD, OpenBSD or FreeBSD?


Guess why? If it's a laptop in a different country.
There many reasons, of course. They use Skype, for example.
Also, are you ready to fly over to help if it's not fixable remotely? ;-)


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> Guess why? If it's a laptop in a different country.
> There many reasons, of course. They use Skype, for example.
> Also, are you ready to fly over to help if it's not fixable remotely? ;-)



Well, I once had this issue: skype and whatever, they need to do something.
This is not easy. Telling click there, click there via phone.


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## Rand0m (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> Guess why? If it's a laptop in a different country.
> There many reasons, of course. They use Skype, for example.
> Also, are you ready to fly over to help if it's not fixable remotely? ;-)



Very true. I’m planning to install Linux for them when I visit them this year. Linux a great replacement for Windows.  BSDs are for totally different audience.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

blueCub said:


> Very true. I’m planning to install Linux for them when I visit them this year. Linux a great replacement for Windows.  BSDs are for totally different audience.



Go for FreeBSD


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> However the heck if that if the router changes suddenly  Then no port forward, no enter, then, again asking by phone to set up the router, where to click,...


There is a good tool to maintain persistent tunnels: security/autossh, just run it as a _cron_ task @reboot:
	
	



```
/usr/local/bin/autossh -M 0 -q -f -N -o "ServerAliveInterval 60" -o "ServerAliveCountMax 3" -R 8022:localhost:22 user@remotehost
```


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> There is a good tool to maintain persistent tunnels: security/autossh, just run it as a _cron_ task @reboot:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



not bad actually. I didn't know this one.


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## Rand0m (Feb 15, 2019)

I use FreeBSD exclusively for my desktop and servers. FreeBSD is not an option for my folks.  They literary use only Skype on it and quite often I can to long on team viewer to help them. For them security is not important


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> 22 has become perilous


Why? It's behind a firewall in the scenario described.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> Why? It's behind a firewall in the scenario described.



Yeah, I saw. Looks ok.


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> there are numerous hackers, located in China trying the BruteForce  Changing fake IP regularly.


I've seen them a lot. You should limit the connection rate using e.g._max-src-conn-rate_ option of pf().


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> I've seen them a lot. You should limit the connection rate using e.g._max-src-conn-rate_ option of pf().



I don't like it really. They  have pretty good ideas to attack especially _Linux_ servers.


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> A small raspberry with good ssh config with FreeBSD (no pkg installed) is fairly sufficient, isn't it? what do you think?


Frankly, I didn't understand the purpose of such box in this context.
To set up an SSH tunnel you need an external server with public IP address, thus both parties (behind firewalls) can be connected through it. Since ISPs charge a lot for static IP addresses it makes more sense to setup a VPS in a cloud for $5/month (e.g. with Linode, Digital Ocean etc.). Many of them have ready-to-use FreeBSD images.


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## wolffnx (Feb 15, 2019)

slow in my opinion,good for "simple day users" dont for developers or system admins
before the teamviewer was cool I installed Radmin server in the client machine and I connect from outside
with a simple route rule in the adsl modem of the user and using the radmin client from mi side
fast as hell.
forget it..teamviewer can be a breach of security in a controled  or bussines network,because any user
cant leave their machine on and leave teamv running and connect from outside
for that I cut their wings in DNS rules,allow only selected users to user teamviewer


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> Frankly, I didn't understand the purpose of such box in this context.
> To set up an SSH tunnel you need an external server with public IP address, thus both parties (behind firewalls) can be connected through it. Since ISPs charge a lot for static IP addresses it makes more sense to setup a VPS in a cloud for $5/month (e.g. with Linode, Digital Ocean etc.). Many of them have ready-to-use FreeBSD images.



this box would allow to access distant. You just need to set up the port forward, on the relative's router.



wolffnx said:


> slow in my opinion,good for "simple day users" dont for developers or system admins
> before the teamviewer was cool I installed Radmin server in the client machine and I connect from outside
> with a simple route rule in the adsl modem of the user and using the radmin client from mi side
> fast as hell.
> ...


Good point 

This is a good reason to use uniquely *BSD


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## aragats (Feb 15, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> You just need to set up the port forward, on the relative's router.


Only if you have a static public IP address.
Please, see my previous post above.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 15, 2019)

aragats said:


> Only if you have a static public IP address.
> Please, see my previous post above.


dyndns,... for the cron.


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## Spartrekus (Feb 16, 2019)

Wozzeck.Live said:


> https://www.teamviewer.com/en/
> 
> As today, this seems to be still free for personal use.
> 
> ...



Teamviewer, because it is free?
It is not really free, because there is no freedom.


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## aragats (Feb 16, 2019)

Wozzeck.Live said:


> Maybe updated free binaries are only available for Windows, for the Linux binary (if you use the Linux version) I don't know


Actually, there is no Linux binary: whatever they call so is a Wine wrapper. In FreeBSD I use Window binary with Wine. The one which refused continuing for free was a real Windows installation (in bhyve).


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## Spartrekus (Mar 1, 2019)

Teamviewer sucks completely, as expected because it is business 
Everyone has a limited time for using it for free non-professional use.
It blocks your connection for few minutes, and you can reconnect after given time.

What is the possible alternative? X11 forward on MS Window?

Anydesk is even more locking users. https://anydesk.com/order 
Anydesk is good answer on a MS Windows forum, but alternatives could be BSD based here.


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## aragats (Mar 1, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> X11 forward on MS Window?


I guess, we already spoke about X11 forwarding – it simply doesn't work properly for modern GUI applications.
Chromium is a good example: try forwarding it, and you'll get just a gray rectangle...


Spartrekus said:


> Anydesk is good answer on a MS Windows forum, but alternatives could be BSD based here.


If a solution is not multiplatform, most people in most cases simply don't need it, it's not a solution.
Anydesk at least has official FreeBSD support and meaningful licensing scheme – in contrast to Teamviewer.


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## Spartrekus (Mar 1, 2019)

x11 is ultra slow with GTK, yeah... this is the bottle neck.

vnc is complex to set up actually.

With a tunnel, I tried tigervnc and tightvnc, it works, but perfs are not that great. 
VNC with few colors works more or less, over a ssh tunnel. 
Anyhow vnc is not a greatest hit solution.


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## jpierri (Mar 2, 2019)

Some time ago I tested net/xrdp.
It was good in terms of speed, even comparable to M$ RDP 5 under similar constraints.


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## scottro (Mar 2, 2019)

I've used it on CentOS to help my wife with her Mac in her studio. At that time I don't think there was anything that worked as well, but I haven't used it in a few years.  I've never tried it on FreeBSD, and only used the free for personal use version.


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## BSD User (Mar 4, 2019)

I don’t remember when was the last time I used it.


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