Running A Server (Sort Of)

Here's my situation:

I have a nice iMac in a location I cannot usually access. I do have occasional access to it, but I often need to check up on it to make sure everything is running smoothly. I've been using teamviewer, but on occasion, the computer crashes or TeamViewer crashes. This means I lose control of it until I am able to physically access it again. What is the best way to ensure constant, easy control of the mac without opening any ports, just keeping it standard?

If you have the actual server software you could run a VPN. If it is just regular Mac OSX then - you may be able to setup port knocking. That being said - if the machine crashes I don't see how using any other protocol would help. If teamviewer is the one crashing then I would understand looking for another way in.

Some information on port knocking
zeroflux.org

Have you tried VNC? Used it for years to remotely access systems.

Or you could use OSX's biult in screen sharing. I keep tabs on my g4 server running tiger by simply enabling it on the target machine, but turning it on is slightly different depending on what OS the imac is running

Why not using "Apple remote desktop". I'm using it and VNC for a very long time on different operating systems. You can use "Chicken of the vnc" on the client side also, very easy to set up. On the server side just enable screen sharing and forward ports 5900 and 3283 if you will use "Apple remote desktop" and you're done.