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Brian J Best edited this page Oct 15, 2023 · 5 revisions

Welcome to the BlueSky wiki!

Initial instructions are here.

BlueSky establishes and maintains an SSH tunnel initiated by your client’s computer to a BlueSky server. That server is hosted by you.

The tunnel allows two connections to come back to the computer from the server: SSH and VNC. The SSH and VNC services on the computer are the ones provided by the Sharing.prefpane.

You use an Admin app to connect via SSH to the BlueSky server and then follow the tunnel back to your client computer. You select which computer by referencing its BlueSky ID as shown in the web admin.

Apps are provided to connect you to remote Terminal (SSH), Screen Sharing (VNC), and File/Folder copying (SCP). You still need to be able to authenticate as a user on the target computer.

Since BlueSky from your client computers is an outgoing connection most SMB networks won’t block it. In enterprise environments, BlueSky can read the proxy configuration in system preferences and send the tunnel through a proxy server.

BlueSky Server should be Ubuntu 16.04 (other distributions may work) or use Docker. BlueSky Client requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher. For best security, use 10.11 or higher.

A short copyright history: BlueSky was originally a product of Mac-MSP LLC. It was sold to LOGICnow as part of an IP buy. LOGICnow was purchased by SolarWinds. SolarWinds management open-sourced this code in October 2017. In 2021, the MSP division of SolarWinds (which was partially comprised of LOGICnow assets) was spun out to a new company called N-able. Neither SolarWinds nor N-able will provide tech support for this code. It's doubtful anyone working there even remembers BlueSky exists. The original LOGICnow/BlueSky repo is uneditable by any project maintainers.

P.S. This BlueSky has nothing to do with a new social media platform in 2023.