I’m going to be away from home for a few weeks and would like to access my computer (LMDE) while I’m away. Remote desktop connection would be ideal, just file transfer would be acceptable.
Is a VPN necessary, or can port forwarding be good enough for a one time use?
What software/networking recommendations do you have?
Answering on the idea of port forwarding. Though like others have said, tailscale or similar is a better option.
Opening an ssh port would allow file transfer. You could also so remote desktop with port forwarding over ssh and vnc (or some other more modern protocol, haven’t futzed with anything like that in a long time).
Probably doesn’t need saying but make sure your system is up to date. Also using a nonstandard port and using key based authentication and disallowing password authentication and good security measures. If the device you’re connecting from isn’t something you’re bringing with you, you’d also need a copy of your private key.
Tailscale or Netbird literally take 15 minutes tops to set up and get working. Then you just pick whatever services like SSH you want to use, have them accept connections only from Tailscale/Netbird IPs, and you’re gold.
I use Tailscale on my entire home lab, and with my friends and family for everything from Minecraft, to accessing my Jellyfin home media server, to accessing my parent’s home PC across the country to check updates and backups.
Fast, easy, free, and secure.
Tailscale is easier and has a generous free tier, Netbird is free and has more features
If you set up one port forward to any SSH server on your local network (e.g., a spare Raspberry Pi), you can then use SSH tunneling to mirror any port on any machine in your local network to ports on your remote SSH client. And it leaves no trace on either side outside of the terminal session.
That sounds…not…smart…
Wireguard
Port forwarding is moderately simple but there are risks to just opening a port and not guarding it with appropriate firewall rules. This includes an SSH server if not up-to-date.
Whereas setting up something like Tailscale on your machine and on your laptop is exceedingly straightforward, avoids firewall reconfigurations, and Just Works™. You could then connect to whatever service you have running, just as if you were on your LAN. My only gripe is that you do need a Google/Microsoft/GitHub/Apple account or OIDC to set up.
In the long term, if you have misgivings about that company operating the coordination server necessary for this tunneling solution, then there’s always the open-source Headscale, which is a drop-in replacement.
will recommend. just use Tailscale. you may distrust any of these OIDC providers, but that doesn’t mean they can see your traffic. long term if you’re paranoid move to Wireguard or Headscale, but this is so simple it’s a no-brainer
