I’ve got two machines; my desktop machine, and my laptop. The desktop machine is always on. It runs Gaim for instant messaging, and has all my files on it. I use Thunderbird to read my mail, which is on an IMAP server on that desktop machine. My laptop has a wireless card in it, which means I can use it elsewhere in the house. The problem is this: when I’m on the laptop, I’ve not got access to everything. I mean, I could set up Thunderbird or Evolution on the laptop and have it read mail by IMAP from the desktop machine. What do I do about instant messaging, though? If I put Gaim on the laptop then (a) I have to set up all my accounts on the laptop as well, and (b) how do these systems react to you being logged in from two different locations? If it logs me out on the desktop then that’s a pain, because it won’t log me back in again when I close down the laptop.
So, maybe I should just use the laptop as a terminal, and have everything actually happen on the desktop. How, though? I can’t have the laptop just do XDMCP to the desktop: if I do that, it starts a second X server, and then Gaim starts up again on the second X server, which is the same thing as running it in two different locations. I don’t want to use VNC from the laptop to acess my existing running X session on the desktop, because the desktop runs at a higher screen res than the laptop is capable of, and because VNC isn’t great if you’re using it all the time (it’s fine for using another machine for a while, but not as your primary means of using it).
How do other people solve this problem? Jono tells me that he just has duplicate environments on the desktop and laptop. I could do that, but it seems a pain to set up, and the twice-logged-in IM problem seems like a bad one.
On I wrote Multi-machine computing, on the subject of Uncategorized.
Joao Ribeiro
Jason
You could use bitlbee, the irc-IM gateway thingy, if you weren’t too attached to the GUI.
mrben
I use VNC for my GAIM session only.
If you are MSN-only you could look into gtmess, the console-based MSN client, which you could then run in a screen over ssh
sil
Hm. So, Jabber is the only decent solution, huh? No, I don’t want to abandon Gaim for some horrible console client, but thanks for the offer anyway :) Problem with Jabber is that I can never get the smegger working. Still, it’s something to look at: this “priorities” thing seems specifically designed to solve my problem. Losing file transfers is bad, though; I don’t do video conferencing over MSN (does Gaim even support it?) but I do do file transfers. Is that slated for implementation at any point?
davee
Can’t get Jabber working, in what sense? You could try installing Psi – the most recent version supports file transfers.
sil
Whenever I try and sign up for Jabber stuff it just doesn’t seem to work. Don’t really know why; I don’t really understand it, you see. If there was a handy guide somewhere then that would be good. I don’t want to switch IM client: Gaim has all that nice Gnome integration, and I don’t want to lose that.
Schwuk
As I mainly use Gaim for MSN - I only have a couple of non-MSN contacts so I just duplicate those, and your MSN list follows you around anyway – It’s not been a huge problem. The Jabber priority stuff sounds good though – I might have to look into it… I’ve been thinking of sticking a Jabber server on my Linode – give it something to do!
I host all my email on my Linode, and have various IMAP clients (inc. Squirrelmail on the box itself) configured for it.
I host all my files on a separate box (rebuilt my desktop too many times!) and use NFS to access it from Linux, and SAMBA to access it from Windows. I’m also starting to rely heavily on Subversion for certain pieces of work.
As you say, VNC (and RDP) work for short periods, but not full time. RDP works better though because it resizes the display depending on your client settings. Shame it’s MS only…
I used to run X11 under Cygwin on my Windows laptop and run the apps from my Linux box through X, but you had to open up a new app.
So, in a nutshell? Centralise as much as possible and duplicate your clients.
Phil Wilson
Well, there’s always Gabber, the GNOME Jabber client.
Jabber doesn’t only support priorities for different logons, but different resources as well, so people can see if you’re at work, at home, whatever.
The bonus of Jabber for me (I can’t remember if GAIM supports it) is that you can actually sign in to multiple MSN (or whatever) accounts simultaneously. Very useful.
sil
Ah, but Gaim is the target of all the integration stuff; Dashb oard and Beagle and all that are working with Gaim contacts and so on. While none of this stuff is really there yet, it will be, and I don’t want to have to migrate to it in order to get my hands on all this coolness. Clearly the answer is to do MSN through Jabber from Gaim, rather than just MSN from Gaim directly. I just have to get the damned thing to work. In particular, I have a fair few contacts who are not MSN, but are AIM/ICQ/IChat, and the jabber.org/jabber.com servers are blocked from AIM access. Where do I find a Jabber server to use?
sil
Of course, what I should have done is looked. Jabber.org has a list of public servers which includes jabber.org.uk, which seems to support everything. This is clearly my solution! More news as and when I suss it out.
sil
Yeah, so: Jabber doesn’t support MSN file transfers. That’s a bit of a pain, actually. Moreover, I can’t seem to get my AIM contacts to work; MSN ones worked OK, but AIM didn’t. It doesn’t seem to have registered me correctly, for some reason. This is why I don’t like Jabber :)
Nonetheless, you should be able to Jabber at me as stuartlangridge@jabber.org.uk, in addition to me being aquariusthegreat@hotmail.com on MSN, and aquariusthegreat on AIM/IChat. It would be really useful if someone were to send me a message via AIM/IChat, so I can see if it works.
Mario
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned it, but why do you have to be signed on with the same im in two locations? Side note: this works fine with AIM, but its awkward. I just have two im names, zorcon and zorconLT (Laptop). this has the added benifit that you can send messages to your self i.e. “remember to call that cute girl back when you leave the office”
sil
Mario,
If I have two names then all my friends have to add me twice, and I have to add all my friends twice. This would be a big pain…
I use Jabber and MSN for IM, and Jabber provides “gateways” to other protocols/networks; so I just use a Jabber client to connect to a Jabber server and to MSN.
This has the advantage of using a nice Jabber feature, that allows you to be logged on from several places, using different “priorities“.
For example, you’re on your desktop with priority 5. When you turn on your laptop, that is set up to use priority 10, for example, the laptop “takes over” the IM session, and all the messages you receive will be seen on the laptop. When you disconnect the laptop client, control will go back to the desktop client.
Oh, and the roster is kept on the server, so if you add a contact on one of the clients, it also appears on the other.
One bad thing with this is that you lose some features not implemented by the Jabber clients. For instance, I can’t use video conferencing or file transfers in MSN… :-(