Howdy Selfhosters!
A family member who does not live in my state recently got a new PC, and asked for my help in setting it up. Since it can’t be done in person, I’ll have to do this over the phone. Problem is, I don’t really want to walk them through all of the steps (download Firefox, ublock origin, uninstall W11 bloat, etc) over the phone. I was hoping there exists a software that I could host on my Linux machine (I am able to port forward/host externally if necessary), and instruct them over the phone to download the “other end” (client-side) of the software so that I can remote in and set their PC up myself.
I checked out the awesome-selfhosted list and found that most of the remote access softwares are mainly for SSH servers. I did check out Guacamole, but I’m not sure I understand how to utilize the software. Any help and suggestions are welcome. Thank you everyone!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CGNAT Carrier-Grade NAT NAT Network Address Translation VNC Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access
2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.
[Thread #19 for this comm, first seen 18th Jun 2026, 18:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Has anybody tried DWService? It looks promising, and if you don’t shoot me down I’ll try it to help my mother with her constant printer issues.
Not trying to stir the pot here, but to my understanding, the DWService agent is opensource, but the server side isn’t. If I am errant in my conclusion, feel free to school me.
I’ve used it to control my headless Windows server back when I was into self harm.
DWService is great! Never had issues with it. Try it on your own machine to play around and see if it works for your usecaze.
No love for VNC here?
The remote user can even download & run a reverse VNC which connects back to the helper.
Cross-platform…
I’m also a big VNC fan, but I imagine RustDesk is solving for CGNAT better? I’m not aware of anything in VNC that solves CGNAT being a PITA.
Valid point, although OP doesn’t state CGNAT is in the way…
VNC still works.
RustDesk. It works like TeamViewer: install the client on both machines, have the relative read out the client ID and one-time password over the phone, and you can connect immediately. It has self-hostable server components, but you can use the public relay servers without having to configure anything on the clients. You don’t have to open any ports on the firewall either.
Thanks for the quick response, this looks perfect for what we need. Appreciate it very much!!!
If RustDesk doesn’t do what you need, Remotely worked great for me and helping a few family members (though probably a bit more features than you may need).
nomachine is an alternative
For your usecase, I would recommend Rustdesk.
But I would also like to mention Meshcentral. Meshcentral is a hosted application that lets you remotely manage multiple devices. It’s different from meshcentral in that it maintains a constant connection, and you can do things like view files, run administrator CMD commands, in addition to being able to remotely connect and control the computer at any time.
It’s more designed for managing a small enterprise environment, than individual support like OP is doing. The constant connection is designed to be a cheap, open source alternative to Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions that do something similar. It is invasive though, since it is essentially a backdoor you put in the computer, whereas rustdesk is temporary, and only works when you have it open and are actively connected and using it. That’s why rustdesk is more suitable for individual support than meshcentral is.
Although I wouldn’t recommend it for OP, I’m leaving this up for anyone in the future who might be searching for “remote tech support” or similar, and maybe they will find Meshcentral more appropriate.
I need something like this, but for my mother’s malware filled phone…
Unfortunately, there isn’t really a good solution for remote controlling android or ios devices. Meshcentral can view, but not act. Also, the user must initiate the connection from their end.
I was investigating this (for android tablets), and the solution I came too was to enable android debug tools (adb) over wireless (but in this case, remotely), vpn the phone into a remote server to connect them. Then, you should be able to run adb commands remotely (which lets you uninstall apps). And then over adb, you should be able to stream the screen and control it via genscrcpy.
Actually, the first solution I was going to use was device farmer: https://github.com/orgs/DeviceFarmer/repositories , but the above is basically how device farmer works.
I eventually gave up on remote controllung android devices because it wasn’t needed and it would have been a complex deployment.
A simpler solution for your usecase is probably to spend a night cleaning up her phone, and then enable kiddie mode on it. That would disable app installs unless she calls you to approve it. In addition to that, (idk about ios), but you can actually install apps on android devices remotely via the google play website.
Thanks! I have to clean her phone every few months, so I might try the child mode thing.
It does seem like RustDesk is the best for my case. Thanks for taking the time to reply, and thank you for the extra info about Meshcentral. Hopefully it helps someone in the future!
Rustdesk is what I use for tech support for my family. By default it uses the rustdesk official server for the handshake and holepunching or whatever, but you can also selfhost your own if you want to.
But I want to migrate to some kind of hardware web kvm like nanokvm, cause sometimes their pc doesn’t boot and walking them through bios settings over a shaky videocall is a nightmare.
a software
‘Software’ is not a word that get an ‘a’ article. So
I was hoping there exists software that
or
I was hoping there exists a software package that
Having said that, you can install UltraVNC and have it ‘call home’; and it works very well.
Your dialect of English is not the only one
People saying rustdesk should realize the Chinese connection it has. I would not use it for that reason.
It’s open source, and the relay’s are e2ee (and audited), but they can also be self hosted.
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Do you have actual technical issues with rustdesk?
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Do you have an alternative software you would recommend? I hate when people spread FUD or say “don’t use/do this” without actually providing an alternative. Drives me nuts. Because if you don’t present an alternative to a software that someone needs, your complaints are kinda meaningless and a waste of everybody’s time because they’re gonna end up ignoring the complaints and using the tool they need.
RustDesk is not fully open source, there are closed source parts for it.
Currently there is no good alternative unfortunately.
If you aren’t a fan of RustDesk, one alternative that I’ve used a bit is Remotely (https://github.com/immense/Remotely). Me and a few people were using it but most of them went to RustDesk.
Lmao stop spreading more FUD. They have a paid, proprietary web UI to make management and administration easy. But you can get all the critical components needed to actually run the software from the source.
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This is just racism btw. FOSS software is FOSS software regardless of the race of the people doing it.
Whew! Thought I’d missed something.
oh no, rustdesk does have some significant problems. I could give you a nice list. It’s just that nobody cares, they don’t matter, and we don’t have a good alternative.
This user’s main account is Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org (probably). You can take a look through their post history to get an idea of why they might make this comment…
oh no, rustdesk does have some significant problems. I could give you a nice list.
Sure, I get that. I was just wondering about the Chinese connection bit.
You can take a look
Oh…I already did. LOL
IIRC, somebody tried to trace the company back to its owners, but the chain ended with a company that is likely Chinese. One of the earliest company-hosted relay servers was also located in China based on its IP address. The company now runs multiple servers on various continents.
Some people also freaked out when the company started offering paid, binary server images and services that added extra features like a management console, assuming (incorrectly) that they would replace the basic, no-cost, open-source images.
I was just wondering about the Chinese connection bit.
I actually can’t find any evidence of this. The company appears to be headquartered in Singapore, CEO’d by an American dude.
Definitely not. If it would be 100% open source, but rustdesk is not FOSS.
We investigated rustdesk for critical infrastructure and decided that it cannot be used, because some parts of it are not something you can review.
Brother it is 100% open source. whatever part you failed to review was not something you could not review. You can fully compile it and self-host. It has no binary blobs required for it to function.
I’m sorry whatever ‘team’ you think you’re on is literally incompetent.
Unpack that. Why are you suspicious of Rustdesk? Open source/inspect code, direct p2p connection…perhaps I am missing something. School me.
RustDesk is not 100% open source, it has closed source parts. It has installed suspicious certificates.
We investigated on using it on critical infrastructure, and decided that cannot use it because of these issues.
It has installed suspicious certificates.
I dug into this, and it looks like it has been fixed: https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/discussions/6444#discussioncomment-12039260 , and no longer does that.
So Rustdesk can be used entirely open source (since the proprietary management web UI is not critical), and it no longer installs certs.
So maybe it had problems a while ago, but it looks clean in these regards now.
Bruh doesn’t realize everyone can see he’s posting from his gooner account 😭
Hey! This is good instance, don’t judge!
You came to this thread to be a racist chud and made a complete fool of yourself. If you don’t want to be mocked and judged, I don’t know what to tell you other than be better.
