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Pigumon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 4, 2004
441
1
I have an old PB 12" running 10.4.11 and would like to access my external drives connected to my mac mini running 10.5.7 over the internet. The mac mini is connected to a router.

I've seen a lot of talk about VNC, but it seems you need a static IP? I'm hoping there's a work around.

Please make note I do not have leopard on both machines, so I can't use iChat screen sharing.

Thanks
 

Pigumon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 4, 2004
441
1
wow, dont post in the afternoon on a saturday! there were a hundred posts after mine within minutes.

Anyway, I realized if I set my mail client to simply send a blank email everyday, it will contain my IP. So that basically eliminates the Dynamic IP problem.
 

iphong

macrumors member
Aug 28, 2004
66
0
Washington, DC
use logmein.com

or if your router support dyndns.com service, go there register, and get a domain name such as yourname.dyndns.org. After that go back to your router setting put in your dyndns.com username and password and click save. After this step, everytime your modem changes its IP address, your router will send that new IP information to dyndns.com and assign your domain name server to that new IP. next you need to forward your 5900 port to your mac mini local ip address (e.g. 192.168.1.2), this can be done in your router admin page (192.168.1.1).

That's it, now you can use VNC to connect to your mac mini via yourname.dyndns.org:5900

Hope this helps.
 

lag1090

macrumors 6502
Jan 28, 2007
280
0
NJ
The DynDNS route has worked for me fairly well.

VNC is a relatively secure remote access method, and it's also a widely supported standard. As such, I think it is the best option.
 

mathcolo

macrumors 6502a
Sep 14, 2008
860
16
Boston
The DynDNS route has worked for me fairly well.

VNC is a relatively secure remote access method, and it's also a widely supported standard. As such, I think it is the best option.

The problem with VNC is that it's purely screen sharing, meaning you cannot transfer files with it. OP, you might want to consider using VNC as a complement to another protocol like FTP or AFP.
 

Pigumon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 4, 2004
441
1
Well my main reason for doing it is to be able to read files from a remote server.

Basically I'll be out of the country and want to watch movies saved on my external drive. I don't want to hassle with getting a hard drive full of movies past any security. :eek:
 
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