Managing xTensoin and correcting errors away from home

[Ryan McLean]

For things such as the "Xtension web remote" built into Xtension, I use a
URL registered through Namecheap. These can be had for as little as ~$10 a
year. You specifically want to use NameCheap because they will let you
generate a API key that can be used in conjunction with a client like dDNS
Broker (Used to be a one-time purchase, looks like $5 a year now. I can
live with that ... software isn't free to maintain) to create a domain or
sub-domain that is updated when your home IP address changes. In my case
that domain is something along the lines of "homeautomation.mydomain.com"

In terms of remote access to my system, I have for years used the excellent
ZeroTier <https://www.zerotier.com>. You set this up on your Xtension mac
and any other machines you want to remote-in with, including Windows
machines, and can even be setup on an iOS device. With ZeroTier running,
the remote machines behave as if they are local machines. You don't need to
worry about manual port forwarding or anything like that. A personal
license is free to use for up to 50 devices -- a limit I would wager most
of us are unlikely to hit. Tailscale <https://tailscale.com> is another
that I have heard of more recently - I haven't tried it personally, but I
probably will soon, if for no other reason than to have some idea of a
viable backup if I ever needed to transition off of ZeroTier.


On Fri, Feb 25, 2022 at 11:25 PM Michel Angelo <michel_angelo at me.com> wrote:

> On  23 févr. 2022 à 15:56, James Sentman <james at sentman.com> a écrit :
>
> As to the Back To My Mac successor I wasn’t even aware they had a for pay
> version of something like that! I will need to check that out myself. Until
> then there are several ways to get to the machine remotely.
>
> With a DynDNS type service it should work, but you need to add
> configuration to your router or modem device so that it will allow specific
> traffic through to the XTension machine as needed. I do pass through my web
> interfaces for direct connection over HTTPS, but I do not pass through the
> non-encrypted versions just so that nobody sniffs the passwords or pin
> numbers to log in while I’m on an unencrypted network somewhere.
>
>
> […]
>
> There is also the “startup for network access” setting in there somewhere.
> You need something else on the local network to send that packet to the Mac
> however. Apple’s airports used to handle this for you if you were trying to
> access it remotely but I’m not sure if it works anymore at all or how to
> set it up on some other device to send to the Mac. Perhaps others will
> chime in.
>
>
> Thanks James, I will look into that and then report to the list. Security
> is of paramount importance to me and I will focus on the SSH - Screen
> Sharing option.
>
> —
> Michel Angelo
> <michel_angelo at me.com>
>
>
>
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>
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