Hallo again, boys & girls.
Following a slight 're-working' of the main script by Grant (better known to us all as
smokey01 on the Puppy Forums), I have great pleasure in releasing new, updated versions of
BackSeatDriver v3.19.....the 'Puppy' answer to - and improvement upon - TeamViewer (in a fraction of the space, and no reliance upon Qt5!)
To recap:-
BackSeatDriver is capable of:-
1) Remote desktop control
2) Real-time 'chat' messaging
3) File transfers, and
4) Real-time, two-way voice communication - courtesy of Puppy's native, built-in 'softphone'; PSIP.
This all makes it an invaluable teaching & 'assistance' tool. If a fellow Puppian has 'issues', and another Forum member feels able to assist them, they can take control of that person's desktop, show them how to go about fixing their problem, and, via PSIP, talk them through it & and explain
why they're doing what they're doing at the same time.
The messaging function can be used for just chatting or, if necessary, to copy/paste and send snippets of code if required.
The file transfer function can be used to transfer across any items which the 'teacher' may feel are relevant to the 'student's' situation at hand. Multiple items can be sent, simply by putting them all into a single directory, and then 'sending' that directory. BackSeatDriver handles it all 'on-the-fly' without the need to have to pack/unzip the directory in question.
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Having been using it regularly in recent weeks to talk to a few other Puppians (chiefly CatDude & tuxtoo), I've made a new video to demonstrate, and explain how the various functions work, since I now understand it much better. You can find it at my YouTube channel, here:-
"BackSeatDriver, fully explained..." - VIDEO
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The app is available in two formats; either as a .pet package, or as a 'portable', self-contained ROX-App. These are, variously, available in 3 distinct varieties:
A 64-bit flavour.
A 32-bit flavour (for relatively 'modern' Puppies).
A 32-bit flavour for 'older' Puppies, which includes a number of extra, required dependencies.
Due to the need for a minimum glibc 2.17 - UPup 'Raring' and later - required by PSIP (these are Grant's own compilations of PSIP 1.42), I'm providing a 'Runtime "upgrade"' for older Puppies. This basically upgrades your Glibc, and adds several additional dependencies. Even when you've finished with BackSeatDriver and feel you no longer need it, I would advise leaving the runtime upgrade in place. Following extensive testing this last day or two, it has absolutely no adverse 'side-effects on all the older Pups I've experimented with in 'Live' mode, and will enable you to install/use newer packages than you would otherwise be able to. Its only disadvantage (regrettably) is an unavoidable increase in Puppy's size. This cannot be implemented by means of an SFS package, since an SFS will not 'overwrite' the all-important 'linker' (
ld-linux.so.2), which is the
one item that enables the upgrade to work.
(*shrug*)
I've had this functioning perfectly in Puppies as new as Bionicpup64 8.0, and as old as 'Lupu' 5287 (necessarily with the runtime upgrade).
(PLEASE NOTE:- One necessary 'peculiarity' for BSD (to get the file-transfer operation fully-functional - required by ncat) is the need for the correct sym-link to /usr/lib/libpcap. I can't build this into the packages due to the multitude of different versions in use across the Puppy generations.....but regardless of the version employed by your Pup, you'll need to create a sym-link for libpcap.so.0.8. Once created, file-transfer should be functional.)
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You can find the .pets & ROX-Apps at my Google Drive, here:-
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
Navigate through and help yourselves to the version and format you're interested in. You'll also find the 'Runtime upgrade' if you require it. for an elderly Pup. (Why should the newcomers have all the fun?)
For the .pets, d/l & install as usual; you'll find the MenuEntry under Menu->Network. For the ROX-Apps, d/l, and unzip with UExtract or similar. (This is not a 'fake' extension!) Put the ROX-App anywhere you like.....and simply click to fire it up.
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If you like to keep your firewall switched on at all times (most of us, I think, prefer to do this), you
will need to make exceptions for ports
1234 and
39022. These don't need to be TCP- or UDP-specific, so simply enter the port numbers in as they are.....space delimited, of course. This permits TCP
and UDP traffic in both directions on those two ports.
Modern Pups have a permanent indicator of firewall status in the 'systray', notification area over to the right. For older Pups which don't have this feature built-in, I've performed a slight re-working of Rob Lane's wonderful '
firewall-state-2.1' .pet package. Functionality hasn't been touched; I've simply 'modernised' the firewall status indicator icons for the tray area, to make them a bit more obvious.
You'll also find this in the BackSeatDriver directory.
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In a nutshell, these packages are my own tribute to Grant's genius in putting BackSeatDriver together. I assisted with some of the 'testing' around a year ago, and Grant published the full version of the main script in the January Newsletter early this year. I was so impressed with the concept of the whole thing, as well as the remarkably small size, that I've been working on these packages, on & off, for the last 8 or 9 months. It has, however, been well worth the time spent.
Credits must also go to
CatDude, jamesbond (for PSIP itself),
step & MochiMoppel. Everybody's contributions to the final, finished 'product' are greatly appreciated. Cheers, guys!
This
is - if you like - my 'Xmas present' to the community. Try it for yourselves.....and see if you don't agree with me as to just
how good it is.
Mike.