[Wolves] xrdp

[Adam Sweet]

--- Kevanf1 <kevanf1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2008/5/16 Andy Wootton
> <andy.wootton at wyrley.demon.co.uk>:
> > I noticed today that Ubuntu Hardy Heron has the
> xrdp server available as a
> > standard package, allowing any standard Windows XP
> client to connect to GUI
> > apps on a Linux server without any additional
> software being installed on
> > the client. This strikes me as an incredible
> advantage for making useful
> > Linux services available in an environment where
> you don't have control of
> > the desktop.
> >
> > Woo
> >
> 
> I've not heard of the xrdp server before Woo.  Am I
> correct in
> assuming it allows a standard 'Network Drive'
> (Microsoft terminology
> for a network connection to a 'share' on a different
> machine) to
> either an 'app' or a 'share' onto a Linux PC running
> the server?  So,
> if I wanted I could set up a share from the XP
> machine to my Linux
> machine and run say GIMP from the Linux PC on the
> Win PC?  Or does it
> need a folder or something setting up?

You're a little bit to cock here. RDP is the protocol
used by Windows machines for the built in Windows
Remote Desktop in Windows NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003,
Vista and Server 2008. There's no network file sharing
involved.

What you would do (I assume, I've not used xrdp server
on Linux but I have used Terminal Server client on
Linux to access a Windows XP remote desktop session at
work) is use it like VNC to get a remote desktop.
Apparently, RDP 6.1 clients (XP SP3, Vista SP1 and
Server 2008) with Server 2008 as the server can do
individual applications over RDP, packaged as an .rdp
file or as an msi installer. I guess there's nothing
to stop you having this on a Windows network share.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_Services

I think what you're talking about is either XDMCP
which is a remote X login and I wasn't able to get
working last time I tried:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xdmcp

Or you could do X forwarding over SSH, which is dead
simple, but not very fast in my experience:

ssh -X -C username at xservermachine

-X means X forwarding, -C means use compression as
it's pretty slow otherwise. Now login on the other
machine and run an X application, it's window will
display on your local machine. It's pretty slow
though. Jittery on a lan and downright painful over a
WAN in my experience. Your chosen remote machine has
to have SSH server running with 'X11Forwarding yes'
set up in the sshd config file. This doesn't support
audio. You can also do this from Windows if you have
Putty and Cygwin with X installed.

http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.60/htmldoc/Chapter3.html#using-x-forwarding

Other options include VNC and FreeNX which I believe
don't encrypt your traffic (including your key
strokes) but are fast over a WAN and can be redirected
over SSH for security. Eg for VNC over SSH:

Start a VNC server on your remote machine, you might
want to preconfigure it, see link below:

ssh -C -L 5901:localhost:5901 username at remotehost

then in a VNC viewer connect to localhost:5901

there are a few wrinkles to this though, a better set
of instructions is at:

http://wiki.adamsweet.org/doku.php?id=vnc_over_ssh

I believe the commercial version of NX does encrypt
your traffic.

To wrap up, a comparison of options:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop_software

Ad - worn out now :)

-- 

http://blog.adamsweet.org/


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