[inkhead]

I recently purchased my Mom a MacBook, Airport Express, and new printer. She hasn't used a Mac in a while so I had everything shipped to my house first so I could set it up. I live about 3,000 miles away. After configuring the computer I decided I should set it up so if anything goes wrong I can easily get in via SSH & VNC to fix potential problems or walk her through things she doesn't understand.

Here is what I have done so far:

• Enabled Sharing > Remote Login (SSH)
• Enabled Sharing > Remote Desktop + Setup VNC
• Opened the correct ports on the Airport Express, So these items will work remotely
• Setup here internal DNS so here internal IP will always be 10.0.1.22 (So Airport Express Port forwarding will always work)
• Saved her Airport Settings so the MacBook connects to her Airport Express when she opens it.

So hopefully she will plug-in her MacBook, and the Airport Express to her freshly installed DSL and be on the internet. This however leaves me with several problems. [I need advice, and would like to ship her everything tomorrow (Saturday)[/b]

Things I need help with:

• Setup her computer to automatically keep her IP updated, or email me updates (less of a good solution).
• Possible options seem to be OVH@Home, DynDNS, so that way if her IP changes, I can always go to mom.dyndns.com or something. Using the computer to email might not be as smart incase she screws up mail.app

What is currently the best solution to have her computer (I can use cron) automatically update her IP address, email it to me, or use a service like dynDNS. I tried both a DynDNS client and OVH@home client, however they both need setup as Login Items, and stay in the dock or require manual updates. [b]I really want this part to be transparent. I don't want to have to tell her "Mom, go into utilities, launch this app, click update..." and so forth. Not to mention if she screws something up bad enough She might not be able to do this.

Anyone else had the same situation? Is there a command line utility that can update dyndns or another service? I want it to update say with every restart, or once a day should be good enough. How can I do this? An alternatively if I can't do this....

How do I make Applescript tell me my outside IP address? Is there a simple script that lets me send email from the command line? I have my own hosting server, and even if I had a command line that sent and email to my server with subject of IP address.. This would be fine, but waste of lots of email.

Is there any dynDNS client that I can run hidden for the most part? I remember there used to be a mac app that let you selectively set Mac OS X apps to run hidden so they didn't show in the dock. Even this would be fine and I could just use OVH@HOME I think.

Anyone, I could really use some help before I ship it to her tomorrow.

Thanks, I figured MacNN community would have a good solution.

[rjt1000]

I use SSH and VNC to administer my elderly Mom's iBook 1000 miles away. Fortunately her cable isp doesnt change her ip address very often. Just in case, I put a bookmark for ipchicken.com on her browser toolbar, so I can call and ask her to click on the link and read the ip address to me. But if your Moms ip address changes regularly, that would be a hassle.

Perhaps this link will help give you some ideas on scripts for emailing her ip address to you. Good luck.

[mfbernstein]

dyndns has a Unix client written in perl. You can configure this to start via launchd, so it should be transparent to the user.

[ghporter]

MacBook, or MacBook Pro? Not that it matters, because you seem to be asking a network-related question, not a hardware question at all. I'll move this to the Networking forum...

[inkhead]

Thanks sorry I placed in in the wrong forum. Thanks for the tips so far guys.
Worst case I'll just give her this link:
Current IP Check Which tells her, the IP.

Or I can curl that page to an HTML document then upload it scp to my server and set it for a cron script i guess... hmm..

[Mac Write]

DNSUpdate will do exactly what you want. I use it for my own domain via ZoneEdit. I would go the route of Remote Access and then change SSH port and even use SSH Keys for stronger security. Then set an alias so when you login to her computer you type "VNC" and the VNC commandline app launches.

Come Leopard, you will be able to use iChat for desktop sharing making all of this obsolete in most cases.