I have a Windows 2003 Server located in My ISP premises. I remote control this server with terminal services remote desktop utility. I have a Slackware 12.0 installation in my local computer and use the rdesktop command
, where remote_host is the Windows server.
Until recently this setup was working without any problems. But since few days It is showing some unexpected kind of problems. When I issue the same rdesktop command, the command just executes and hangs there. I donot get any windows showing the remote host desktop, nothing. The command just hangs in there. This is not a firewall or access permissions because a connects just fine. I thought this maybe my localhost display permission problem so I did a but that didn't solved anything.

I got fedup with rdesktop and decided to install a RealVNC Free Edition server in the Windows 2003 server and use it but I have again run into problems with this. After installing RealVNC in the server, I tried connecting to the server using RealVNC vncviewer which connects just fine but shows a black screen in the output window. This is also not a firewall problem since connects just fine. I waited for just enough time but the screen doesn't changes and lastly disconnects saying 'Connection was reset by peer'. This also seems doesnot works.

To make it more clear, I have another computer here by my side that has Red Hat WS 4 installed and I can do both remote desktop and vnc connection to the windows server just fine from this computer. Works flawlessly. But from my slack machine both do not work. I could not solve the problem till now. I have altered all options available for vnc viewer like using very low color depth and etc etc but nothing works. I have even created and used a different user account hoping something maybe wrong with my environment but this also doesn't worked. I even deleted all temp files from /tmp directory, checked all the system logs for any clues but none so far. I am really in a fix here.

Another bit of information that might be useful is, both rdesktop and vnc works just fine if I do a VPN connection to my ISP network and then connect. But this shouldn't be like that because We are a sister organization to this ISP and we donot need to use VPN from our office premises to connect to their network. the VPN is only for to be used from elsewhere or when using a different ISP Internet connection. How should I solve this problem??

I don't know what exactly is the problem you're experiencing but I wouldn't expose Windows Terminal Services directly to the internet. What I'm doing is putting a Slackware gateway with a firewall in front of it and forwarding the remote port to my localhost.

Then I connect to the local port with either krdc or rdesktop. This works fine without any problems at all as it has done for the last year with both Slackware 11.0 and 12.0. I suspect there may be a problem with your Slackware installation or your hardware.