Connect three ways and record what each one does to the person at the keyboard

short · 40 min · Objective 1.2

Task

Establish remote sessions using the desktop protocol, an assistance tool and a command-line session, and record for each what happens to anyone sitting at the remote machine. That difference decides which tool is appropriate, and it is the thing candidates most often get wrong.

Steps

  1. Enable the remote desktop host on the guest, connect to it from the host, and record in lab/remote/behaviour.csv with header tool,local_user_sees,consent_required,edition_required what happened to the guest's own screen.
  2. Use an assistance tool for a session in the other direction and add a row, recording whether the user had to be present and whether consent was per-session.
  3. Enable and use a command-line session between the two machines and add a row. Record the host key fingerprint you were asked to accept in lab/remote/hostkey.txt.
  4. Write lab/remote/exposure.md explaining why a port forward is not a remote access plan, and naming three alternatives in order of preference.
  5. Write lab/remote/choice.csv with header scenario,tool,reason giving four scenarios and the tool each one needs, including one where nobody is at the remote machine.

Verify

awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=4 {n++} END {print n" tool(s) compared"}' lab/remote/behaviour.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 {print $3}' lab/remote/behaviour.csv | sort -u | wc -l
grep -c . lab/remote/hostkey.txt
grep -Eic 'vpn|gateway|key-only|not a remote access plan' lab/remote/exposure.md
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=3 {n++} END {print n" scenario(s)"}' lab/remote/choice.csv

Three tools compared with at least two distinct consent answers, a host key recorded, and four scenarios matched to tools. If consent is the same for all three, one of the rows describes what you expected rather than what happened.

Notes

The host key warning is worth understanding now rather than at 2am. A changed host key means either the machine was rebuilt or you are not talking to the machine you think you are, and only one of those is benign.

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