Remote device management for family reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SparkyGears · 2023-11-20 01:54 How would you guys approach managing a bunch of devices for your family? I'm the designated "IT Guy" (not in IT) so I get asked to fix issues with everyone's PCs, phones, and so on. For some family members, the most they can figure out how to do is turn on the computer... so having access without them going through any hoops is ideal. My inclination is to use MeshCentral (MeshCommander?) and install that on everything. On a local network I've seen this work well and the multi-platform access is very appealing. However these family members live in four different houses all over the US - so whatever connectivity gets established between me and them needs to happen remotely (I have a homelab that I can point everything to if that helps). While I could install an appliance on each of their networks, the simpler the better. Also I've heard of headscale to create a mesh VPN between clients, although it would ideally be something where again they don't have to manually enable anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Defiant-Ad-5513 · 2023-11-20 02:09 MeshCentral can also work over the internet the only thing is that the mobile app can't controll only view but that is slowly being worked on ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tomhung · 2023-11-20 02:10 MC is what we use. As long as the clients can see the MC server. MC is buggy as hell on mobile devices. The client needs to be on and connected. You can't WakeOnLAN over wifi. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- qcdebug · 2023-11-20 02:15 If you can establish any kind of wireguard connection to those locations (them to you) then you can use any remote management software to connect from radmin to parsec. Parsec has a bonus of being web based so tunnels aren't needed, downside might be operating system support, I've never tried running it on non windows. Radmin is like remote desktop and you need to know the IP, both of them are fairly responsive and can do advanced things to one degree or another. If you wanted to do real mdm for remote software pushes and OS status checks then that's beyond what I know but I think most of them cost and I don't know of anything self hosted so maybe someone else can chime in if you really needed this instead. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kirblarzkb · 2023-11-20 02:39 I run DWService on all my families machines. Super super lightweight. For family running android I host my own rust desk server and their phones are all configured to allow me to connect. For the ones that have iOS I typically call them or screen record and send to them what to do if it’s simple enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SparkyGears · 2023-11-20 02:53 The Wireguard thing could work... I'm not entirely sure I'd like them "in my network" per-se. That could add some latency on their end coming to me. Would the users be responsible for starting the tunnel in that case? Have never used admin but it looks like it is paid-for software? Ideally is there something free? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SparkyGears · 2023-11-20 03:03 WoL wouldn't be an issue, I can rely on them to at least turn the thing on if it's not already! Good feedback from you and Deifiant on MC. Didn't know the mobile devices bit was buggy, as long as I can see the screen hopefully that would be good enough, although control would be nice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- qcdebug · 2023-11-20 03:03 If you want free parsec has a free teir but everyone has to either log in with that account and have shared systems access or make their own accounts and share their systems to you. This also requires no VPN to manage as it's all cloud connected. If you want already included in the OS then windows has a remote desktop server built in that you just need to enable but then that comes back to enabling a VPN to them. The VPN wouldn't carry their traffic it would be what's known as a split VPN and would only route the subnets you tell it about eg you Colo space. If you tell wireguard to send via tunnel to 0.0.0.0 it absolutely will but it's certainly not required for this application. Is this in the right direction for you or you need a different direction? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SparkyGears · 2023-11-20 03:05 I saw some videos in their documentation on the WAN side of things, was trying to understand how that gets set up. How do the clients find their way to connect to the server in that case? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SparkyGears · 2023-11-20 03:09 These are both really cool! The RustDesk stuff seems neat for Android, I agree. Curious, though - it says it supports most operating systems, so why have DWService if RustDesk can do it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- discodized · 2023-11-20 03:15 you could use RPORT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SparkyGears · 2023-11-20 03:23 Ah right, I totally forgot about the split tunnel. I would often full- tunnel myself when on mobile to take advantage of my pi-hole, but yeah they can just split off what they need for me no problem. It does add complexity to get each client set up to automatically connect on system boot. Was hoping for something a bit more streamlined from an install standpoint but good to know the option is out there. I should have mentioned more specifically that it's not just Windows hosts - there are Android and Chrome OS devices out there that I'd also like to manage/assist with. Having RDP for the Windows hosts of course is great, just not something universally I can depend on being there (thinking more like a VNC-esque screen sharing approach as well). Didn't know about the Parsec free tier either, will have to take a look at that, since that sounds like it could be more frictionless. I'll happily take free cloud services even if they're not entirely self-hosted. In that case I imagine one login on all devices out there would be totally fine, they aren't that sophisticated to manage their own user profiles there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SparkyGears · 2023-11-20 03:30 Good callout, also new for me. At $2/month for the cloud server, that could actually be a great idea to get around the connectivity issues between the multiple houses. Which also makes me think that a number of these other services that normally would be installed in my house, could just be cloud-hosted instead. Doesn't have Android/ChromeOS support so I'd need to augment with something else there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zfa · 2023-11-20 04:19 > How do the clients find their way to connect to the server in that case? Server needs to be publically available. Devices to be controlled all run an agent which connects to the publically available server over https, the 'remote access user' logs in to server's gui on a browser over https in order to initiate a remote control session. A direct connection between user's web session and the remote device's agent is established wherever possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rainformpurple · 2023-11-20 05:50 I'm running a local rustdesk server and have installed the client on all systems I care to administer. Works very well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tomhung · 2023-11-20 07:00 MC has been abandoned. The guy who wrote it changed jobs and they won't let him keep it going. Someone will have to fork it. We will keep using it till the wheels fall off. I'll also look into Guacamole. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unofficialtech · 2023-11-20 13:47 Don't overlook the OS default options. Quick Assist in Windows 10+, Facetime can screenshare in MacOS/iOS devices. Not sure if there's an android comparable. If you are running chromebooks or linux for family users then it makes sense to install a client. In my experience, this mitigates the issue of you managing software on devices and allows you to support even new/remote devices. This assumes you're only doing ad-hoc support, and not making sure they are applying windows updates or maintaining other software updates on their behalf (which I do for my parents every 4th of July and Christmas gathering, everyone else can deal with their own). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Raithmir · 2023-11-20 14:34 I run a wireshark server, with the client installed on family members laptops/desktops to auto connect. I then just connect from my desktop to wireshark and can connect to their devices. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- radiowave · 2023-11-21 14:22 Another maintainer has started working on MechCentral, and as of last month the original author is again contributing, though only in his free time. As I write this, the most recent point release was last week, and the most recent commit in their github was 11 minutes ago. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tomhung · 2023-11-22 02:30 That is very refreshing.