[Macpartners] Remote login

[Albert Willis]

On Nov 14, 2007, at 2:48 PM, Keith McCluskey wrote:

> Can anyone recommend the Mac equivalent of "Remote Desktop  
> Connection" on Windows?  I would very much like to be able to log in  
> to my work machine from home (both Mac's running OS X 10.4.10).  But  
> I've heard that the FTP / Remote Desktop options in the Sharing menu  
> of System Preferences are insecure.  Is this right?  Is there an  
> accepted MIT option?  Will Fetch work securely?
>
> I don't really need desktop control, but file access would be handy.
>
> Thanks very much -
>
> Keith McCluskey

Keith,

to access files remotely (and securely), turn on personal file sharing  
from System Preferences > Sharing. To access the files remotely, use  
the Finders "Connect to Server" command from the Go menu on the remote  
machine. Type 'afp://hostname.mit.edu', where hostname is the hostname  
of your machine. You can use the IP address as well.

If you're more of a command line user, you can turn on remote login  
from the Sharing Preference panel and use SSH to access your machine.  
You should only turn on file sharing or remote login if you have a  
good password--not a word in the dictionary, upper and lower case  
letters, numbers and special characters, etc.

   -- Al