How can I edit local files on a machine as if on localhost, from a remote location

Question

Is it possible to edit the application in the localhost of another machine from another computer. Both are in different network.

Example:
I am having a application app1 in my localhost of my office network(Ubuntu machine). If I want to do some modifications in the application from my home machine (Xp )in a different network..how can i do so ?? Please give me some suggestions..

Answer 1

What you are probably looking for is a remote desktop solution that supports Linux. Try Google to find more solutions. XP Professional comes with a remote desktop solution out-of-the-box.

For remote desktop to work, you may have to edit some firewall settings. This depends on the solution you choose and whether you have a firewall to begin with.

Answer 2

Usaly computers in office networks are not addresable by the internet as a whole. To access your computer you will need your work either setup a VPN (Virtural Private Network) or allow your office machine to be seen by internet. The VPN is the recommended path.

Once the VPN is setup in the office you will need to install or configure VPN software on your home machine.

You should now have the same network permissions at home as any other machine in your office network. You should be able to ping your office machine and the shared servers in your office.

Now you have a couple of choices for editing files.

1. You can set a NTFS Share via Samba, map a network drive on your home machine and use editors on your home machine to edit files. Make sure you use an editor that handles unix line terminiations and windows line terminations. ie not Notepad.
2. You can ssh into your office machine using a ssh client like putty and then use a charecter based editor like vi/emacs to make you changes.
3. You can start an xserver on your home machine (via cygwin and startX) run graphical programes on your work machine via ssh with the output directed to your local xserver
4. you can set up one of the remote desktop software on your link box and remote desktop into your work machine.

By the way you are more likly to get a good answer on these type of question on serverfault.com or superuser.com.

Answer 3

Download and install Hamachi: here for PC: https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi2/download.aspx, here for linux: https://secure.logmein.com/labs/ . this will help establishing direct network. then use anything to edit it: SSH, Samba, ftp, whatever.