VNC question

Hi, I'm in a bit of a bind---I need to get desktop access to a machine that I don't have physical access to. After some googling, I learned about VNCs, and that macports has both a server (osxvnc) and a client (cotvnc). I've never used a VNC and am a bit worried that I won't be able to set them up. Presumably, the server is the one that "serves up" the desktop, so the remote machine would have to run that. I only have access to that machine currently via Terminal and ssh. Has anybody done this type of thing before? Any insight/advice welcome. Thx, --b