I wouldn't mind running that hack myself, but there's no way I'd drop it on someone who couldn't debug if something went wrong.
One approach I've done to make things more debuggable (not for this specific setup, but for Unix-running home servers in general) is to SSH in (I used to - with the user's permission, of course - setup forwarding of port 22 on the user's router/gateway/etc., but nowadays I usually setup a remote tunneling script that the user can kickoff somehow). I also tend to build systems that run for months - if not years - without any maintenance, so there's that, too :)
Still doesn't address the "another machine to set up and maintain" issue, but if I did my job right, it would be as inconspicuous as a wall clock.