Intro

• This page has a list of tools you can use when running remote coding workshops

Quick List

• Visual Studio Code LiveShare extension
• Dedicated Driver
  • LF says easy to set up but a lot of disadvantages
• Anydesk
  • LF says has best advantages
• Git Handoff
  • LF says not great
    • hard to get consistent experience on everyone’s machine
  • make a branch, pull/push, one person shares their machine
• VNC
  • used by Emily
• CyberDojo

AnyDesk Plus EC2 Instance

• AnyDesk

Quick setup guide - see headings below.

Go to Amazon instances

• Login to Amazon (root user) and go to Instances
• Here
• Or select Services (top left) => Compute => EC2
• then click Instances under the Instances heading on the left

Create an EC2 instance

• Click big Launch Instance button
• Give it a name
• Select OS
  • I used Windows last time I did it
  • Used the default - Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Base
• Instance type
  • I used t2.xlarge
• Key pair
  • Remember this is specific to the region
  • If you have one already you can reuse it
  • I clicked Create new key pair
  • gave it a name (eg iconics.learninghour)
  • Used .pem
  • Then stored it securely in 1password
• Configure storage
  • 60 GiB, gp2
• Launch instance (big button at bottom)

Connect to the instance

• If it’s an existing one, right-click the instance and select Connect
• If you’ve just created it, click Connect to instance
  • Initially it’ll say “weren’t able to connect” because it’ll still be setting it up
  • But you can probably still access RDP client
• Click RDP client
  • Click “download remote desktop file”
  • Get the password from the pem
    • Click “upload private key file” and upload the pem file you created or selected earlier
    • Click decrypt password
    • Click the copy button next to the password (NOT the public DNS - the thing below that)
    • Store it somewhere so you don’t have to do this again!
• If you don’t have it already, download Windows RDP client (“Microsoft Remote Desktop”)
  • Either double-click the rdp file you downloaded from Amazon, or…
    • Click the three dots and select “Import from RDP file”
    • Select the rdp file you downloaded from Amazon
    • Double-click the desktop once it’s created
  • Use the password you copied above from the RDP client page on the Amazon instance
  • Click Continue on the security warning (“certificate couldn’t be verified”)
  • Note that on MacBook, it will place the desktop in a new space
    • This can be confusing because if you click the RDP icon or use alt-tab to reach it, it might look like you have no desktop running
    • It will show the desktop with a green dot to show it’s running IF you used the “import from rdp file” approach, but it won’t if you just double-clicked the rdp file
    • You can use Ctrl + right/left arrow to access the desktop

Set up the instance

• While in RDP and in the Windows instance you just connected to…
• Use this script here
• This means copying the commented out line at the top and running it in an elevated PowerShell
  • (right-click Windows key and select “Windows Powershell (Admin)”)
• This will set up a Windows machine from scratch
• It will also install AnyDesk, thereby allowing others to login to this instance
• This will all take a while - approx half an hour
  • but you can set up anydesk (below) as soon as it’s installed, which should be early on

Set up AnyDesk

• AnyDesk is installed early on in the process
• As soon as you see the AnyDesk icon in the system tray, click it to launch Anydesk
• Click the burger menu, top right, and Set password to get a password your users can use
• When the machine is finished setting up, you need to restart the machine in order for Anydesk to work
  • This will mean closing down AnyDesk. Do NOT click Yes when it asks if you want to install it as a service (not that exact wording but something like that - just click No instead of Yes)
  • (right-click Windows icon => Power => Restart)

Give your ID and Anydesk pw to AnyDesk users

• This is how they will connect
  • Because they have the pw, you can ignore the popup that asks you to accept their connection
• You’ll need a separate machine for each set of users (eg if running a workshop with pairs, a separate machine for each pair or mob - if only one mob, only one machine needed)
• It won’t work unless you’re attached to the instance via RDP and you’ve launched AnyDesk
• I found the Invite button didn’t work - it was just always disabled no matter what
  • but it’s fine, you don’t need it
  • just give users your ID and they can use that to connect
  • they can either enter it in the “Enter remote address” field at the top of the anydesk app, or they can use the following url - https://go.anydesk.com/abcdefghi, where abcdefghi is the 9-digit ID you have given them.

Shut down or terminate your instance to save money

• If you choose shut down (NOT restart) (right-click Windows icon => Power), you will not be charged by Amazon for ongoing compute time
  • you will still be charged (not much) for some storage
  • but it will be available to restart at any time: Instances => right-click => start instance
  • it’s really just gone into hibernation - everything you installed will still be there, but it is equivalent to shutting down a Windows machine
• If you terminate the instance, it’s gone forever but you won’t be charged anything

Stop AnyDesk from launching on startup on MacBook / MacOS

• Not enough to go to systems preferences => Users and Groups
• You have to delete items from Library/LaunchDaemons and Library/LaunchAgents
• full instructions here
  • but when it says Shift + Ctrl + G, it means Shift + Cmd + G, and I couldn’t copy/paste Library/LaunchDaemons and Library/LaunchAgents from the text.

Gotchas

• The AnyDesk invite button doesn’t seem to work - see above
• AnyDesk won’t work unless you’re attached to the instance via RDP and you’ve launched AnyDesk
• While the instance is running, you will be charged for it - see above to see how to either shut it down or terminate it
• If you close down an instance rather than restart (right-click Windows icon => Power => and then shut down instead of Restart), you have to download a new rdp
  • You will get a connection error if you try to connect from RDP using the previous RDP file
    • you only need a new RDP file, not a new admin pw
  • Amazon => Instances => right-click the instance and select Connect
  • Click RDP client
    • you might need to refresh this page to get updated rdp
  • Click “download remote desktop file”
• If you have multiple pairs you will need one machine per pair
• EC2 Windows machines are not really designed to be used in this way, hence odd things like having to keep creating a new RDP file