Our Remote Access Dreams Have Almost Come True!

litlmary · 12-19-2008, 04:05 PM

I frequently need to be able to access my desktop, along with its installed apps and my network, from client sites.

VNC works good (if slowly) as long as my clients don't mind me installing a VNC client app on their computer. I don't like doing that.

The Windows Remote Desktop Client (mstsc.exe) works great and has excellent speed, even over the internet. It is built in to every Windows box, so all I have to do it fire it up and type an address with no other configuration necessary. The convenience and speed are unbeatable.

Problem: that this forces me to leave my desktop booted into XP when I'm out of the office. If I forget, I'm screwed. I'd also rather be using Linux!

Solution: xrdp is finally stable!

Sadly, when I try to log into it (locally or from another machine), I get

Code:

connecting to sesman ip 127.0.0.1 port 3350 (<-- yes, that port# is correct.  It's for the session manager, not the RDP host!)
sesman connect ok
sending login info to sesman
login failed

There seems to be some documented bugs related to this:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=442710
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=441750

The "resolved" status of the second one above should fix it, but I am using Hubert Figuiere's latest version and it still doesn't work.

Any ideas?

TIA,

J

JosipBroz · 12-19-2008, 05:30 PM

It appears that xrdp is a little buggy; other than updating the package to the latest build (preferably one that's pre-packaged for your particular distro), I can only suggest an XP virtual machine. Configured with a tap device, it would allow you to access files on the host machine too (i.e. files residing outside the guest VM as such). Of course, this depends hugely on what you're trying to accomplish. If, however, a VM would suffice, the path is simple. You create a WinXP VM, leave it running on your GNU/Linux desktop, and connect to it remotely from either Windows or GNU/Linux machines. For example, in a QEMU VM (I happen to use the QEMU emulator because it's French), the command line to launch the VM would be something like

Code:

qemu -hda winXP.qcow2 -m 256 -localtime -net nic -net user -redir tcp:3389::3389 -snapshot

,
the tcp port 3389 obviously being the rdp service port. Of course, incoming remote desktop connections must be enabled in the guest WinXP.qcow VM and the respective user(s) with password(s) configured. Although I've never tried this over a network, I can confirm it works for the localhost (the host GNU/Linux machine, accessing the WinXP.qcow via 127.0.0.1), so I think it may be worth a try.

litlmary · 12-20-2008, 02:05 AM

That's a very good idea! I have an XP Pro VM running under Virtualbox that should do the job nicely. It won't give me access to my host OS (Suse), but at least the network would be in reach. I think I'll do that until I get xrdp running right (or the developers smooth it out some more).

My preference is still very much to have direct rdp access to Suse, so any other forthcoming suggestions are welcome!