Giving others secure access to my private network.

I have two machines at home. One acting as a gateway, and the other on a
private network. The gateway machine is firewalled, and will only allow ssh
and http access. It also does IP masquerading for the private network. A
friend of mine has a machine at home, and I would like to grant him secure
graphical access to files in my private network. The machines involved all
run Linux (i.e. the gateway, the inner machine, and my friend's machine).

I do not want to use a solution like FTP because it is not secure. I thought
of running a VPN, and then NFS mounting the needed directories from my inner
machine to my friend's. Is there an easier way to do this?

Thanks a lot.

On 2003-11-20, Ones Self <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> [...] A friend of mine has a machine at home, and I would like
> to grant him secure graphical access to files in my private
> network.

What does "graphical access" mean?

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Am I accompanied by
at a PARENT or GUARDIAN?
visi.com

Grant Edwards <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<3fbcf72c$0$41287$(E-Mail Removed) m>...
> On 2003-11-20, Ones Self <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> > [...] A friend of mine has a machine at home, and I would like
> > to grant him secure graphical access to files in my private
> > network.
>
> What does "graphical access" mean?

It means that my friend can open up Konqueror or Nautilus, and just
copy files of off my machine. In other words: not have to open
a shell and type in anything (like rsync or scp etc.).

On 20 Nov 2003 09:13:10 -0800, (E-Mail Removed) (Ones Self)
wrote:

>I have two machines at home. One acting as a gateway, and the other on a
>private network. The gateway machine is firewalled, and will only allow ssh
>and http access. It also does IP masquerading for the private network. A
>friend of mine has a machine at home, and I would like to grant him secure
>graphical access to files in my private network. The machines involved all
>run Linux (i.e. the gateway, the inner machine, and my friend's machine).
>
>I do not want to use a solution like FTP because it is not secure. I thought
>of running a VPN, and then NFS mounting the needed directories from my inner
>machine to my friend's. Is there an easier way to do this?
>
>Thanks a lot.
read about ssh and sftp. they are reasonably secure. I do not know if
a gui is supported or not.

Ones Self wrote:
> I have two machines at home. One acting as a gateway, and the other on a
> private network. The gateway machine is firewalled, and will only allow ssh
> and http access. It also does IP masquerading for the private network. A
> friend of mine has a machine at home, and I would like to grant him secure
> graphical access to files in my private network. The machines involved all
> run Linux (i.e. the gateway, the inner machine, and my friend's machine).
>
> I do not want to use a solution like FTP because it is not secure.

What about using 'sftp' (Secure FTP) and/or 'scp' (Secure CoPy)? Both
programs perform all operations over an encrypted SSH transport. IMO,
using these programs would probably be the easiest solution.

> I thought
> of running a VPN, and then NFS mounting the needed directories from my inner
> machine to my friend's. Is there an easier way to do this?

A VPN/NFS solution will be a lot of work, and I have a hunch that
tunneling NFS packets throubh a VPN tunnel (i.e., across the Internet
"at large") will be problematic.

Maybe if you provide some additional information about what you and your
friend are striving for, we can offer some other/better solutions (e.g.,
the two of you are writing some software together and you want to store
all of the source files on your computer).

--
Jim

To reply by email, remove "link" and change "now.here" to "yahoo"
jfischer_link5809{at}now.here.com

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 13:13:58 -0500, 2boxers wrote:

> On 20 Nov 2003 09:13:10 -0800, (E-Mail Removed) (Ones Self)
> wrote:
>
>>I have two machines at home. One acting as a gateway, and the other on a
>>private network. The gateway machine is firewalled, and will only allow ssh
>>and http access. It also does IP masquerading for the private network. A
>>friend of mine has a machine at home, and I would like to grant him secure
>>graphical access to files in my private network. The machines involved all
>>run Linux (i.e. the gateway, the inner machine, and my friend's machine).
>>
>>I do not want to use a solution like FTP because it is not secure. I thought
>>of running a VPN, and then NFS mounting the needed directories from my inner
>>machine to my friend's. Is there an easier way to do this?
>>
>>Thanks a lot.
> read about ssh and sftp. they are reasonably secure. I do not know if
> a gui is supported or not.

I am pretty sure that ssh supports this, but I havent done it. also, there
probably is a graphical scp client you could use

"Luke Albers" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed) du>...
> On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 13:13:58 -0500, 2boxers wrote:
>
> > On 20 Nov 2003 09:13:10 -0800, (E-Mail Removed) (Ones Self)
> > wrote:
> >
> >>I have two machines at home. One acting as a gateway, and the other on a
> >>private network. The gateway machine is firewalled, and will only allow ssh
> >>and http access. It also does IP masquerading for the private network. A
> >>friend of mine has a machine at home, and I would like to grant him secure
> >>graphical access to files in my private network. The machines involved all
> >>run Linux (i.e. the gateway, the inner machine, and my friend's machine).
> >>
> >>I do not want to use a solution like FTP because it is not secure. I thought
> >>of running a VPN, and then NFS mounting the needed directories from my inner
> >>machine to my friend's. Is there an easier way to do this?
> >>
> >>Thanks a lot.
> > read about ssh and sftp. they are reasonably secure. I do not know if
> > a gui is supported or not.
>
> I am pretty sure that ssh supports this, but I havent done it. also, there
> probably is a graphical scp client you could use

This is great. I use scp, rsync, and ssh all the time, but I never knew someone
made a gui front-end for them. This will do nicely. Thank you all for your help.