dsl boot straight into rdesktop

Forum: DSL Tips and Tricks
Topic: dsl boot straight into rdesktop
started by: Ebirya

Posted by Ebirya on Jan. 26 2006,17:36

Hi everybody,

I've got a couple of 3-4 years old laptops which I see not use for
at the moment. There's one thing i could use them for though :-)
I have an winxp pro system at home which is powerful enough to run several sessions on it. So I would use those laptops as windows TS clients via rdesktop. There're 2 problems here:
- network cards;
- ideally I'd like rdestop to be the only app running on that laptop.
I've red some pots info here which I hope will let me to get my laptops networks cards working with the DSL.

But is there any way to make DSL boot the GUI and then run the
rdesktop session with the params I'll give to it?

Any ideas/suggessions are greatly appreciated :-)

Posted by starcannon on Jan. 26 2006,18:35

You may use beaver(or text editor of your choice) to edit

Code Sample

home/dsl/.xinitrc

and or

Code Sample

opt/bootlocal.sh

to issue commands and or open programs that you'd like to have happen at boot up.
for instance to get rdesktop logged in automatically you could use beaver to add this line to either of the file options listed above:

Code Sample

rdesktop -g 800x600 -a 16 -D -u UserName -p P@55w0rd 192.168.1.100

thats a very specific login statement that sizes the screen to 800x600 w/16bit color and automatically logs in someone named "UserName" with the password "P@55w0rd" at an ip adress of 192.168.1.100. be sure at a command prompt to issue this command

Code Sample

dsl@box:~$rdesktop --help

for a nice list of commands/switches that you can pass with rdesktop.
GL and hope this was of some use.

Rob

Posted by Ebirya on Jan. 26 2006,19:36

Thanks a lot for such a quick respond!
I'll give it a try a litlle bit later today.

I'd check it right now but I can't get my usb wireless card to work.
I have USB D-LINK DWL-g122 and it's listed as working via Prism2.
However, it doesn't :-(

Posted by Nougat on Jan. 27 2006,03:30

Out of the box, WinXP only supports one session at a time. While you can RDP to a WinXP box, the RDP session will lock out the console session.

< Somewhere > I saw an article for a hack for this. I never tried it, so I can't say whether it works or not.

Posted by Ebirya on Jan. 27 2006,22:08

yep,
I know about that restriction and I've replaced termserv.dll on my WinXP system. So, that's not a prblem in my case. Thank you for pointing that out though :-)

meanwhilee I'm still fighting with my wireless network cards - can't find any that work.

Posted by starcannon on Jan. 29 2006,19:54

Quote (Ebirya @ Jan. 27 2006,17:08)

Heres a list of supported cards

< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Verified_Wireless_Cards >

I use an rt2500 based card but it did take some effort.
If i were buying a card I'd get one off that list, i just happened to be an existing owner of the card i'm using.

GL
Rob

Posted by henrik carlsen on Feb. 02 2006,13:26

Perhaps you also can help me. I'm using rdesktop with the following command - rdesktop -N -k da -f -a 24 ipnumber - when I go in to the terminal server everything works, only when I what to use the arrow key in microsoft excel it goes wrong, if I hold down one of the arrow keys so that is goes out of the picture and I then let go of the key it doesn't stop immediately it goes on for 2 sec. or so - why?

I'm also trying to use the floppy drive trough rdesktop, but I can't mount it, a have to be root to mount it - why?

Best regards - Henrik Carlsen

Posted by starcannon on Feb. 02 2006,18:53

Firstly i'm no guru, i am still a noob, that said I'll help you troubleshoot. Also keep in mind I am using a Frugal Install of DSL 2.2rc1

Sounds like you may be running xfbdev, you should probabaly install Xfree86 to help with your screen painting. I had the *lag scroll* problem myself using xfbdev on the internet.

You could exeriment with the -b argument and see if forced bitmaps will speed you up any.

But i think your best efforts would be more towards getting Xfree86 going if you dont already. There are some walkthroughs on the boards and if you download the Xfree86.dsl and the xf86config.dsl its really pretty easy just install them both then run the xf86config.dsl from the myDSL menu and follow the wizard. Its good to know what graphics chipset you are running.

Heres a link to how i got xfree86 up and running on my laptop its in the thread at this link:
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....37;st=0 >

The only other thing I can think of is a faster network connection. If your doing this over wireless you may consider pluggin in a cat5 cable and seeing if the faster network speed helps some.

GL and hope to hear how it turns out.

Rob

Posted by freeze on Feb. 07 2006,09:23

I would think the mount prob is you have to do "sudo su" and then mount it. If you have a hd-install and want it to be static you have to alter the "fstab" which is located in /etc and add "user" to mountoptions.

Posted by rosumella on Feb. 13 2006,16:34

I wrote this line in /opt/bootlocal.sh :

rdekstop -f -a 16 nameserver

and then rebooted, but still I've to launch rdesktop manually, how can I do it automatically (like transforming old PCs in thin clients)?

Posted by starcannon on Feb. 22 2006,20:15

Quote (Guest @ Feb. 13 2006,11:34)

have you tried putting that line in the /mnt/hda5/home/dsl/.xinitrc file instead? I'm just guessing at this point, Don't forget the 2>/dev/null Anyway if you figure it out be sure to post the solution.

GL
Rob

Posted by ahcoraj on Feb. 28 2006,00:53

I found (accidentially) that if you replace the current .xinitrc with the "rdesktop -g 800x600 -a 16 192.168.1.100, line it will boot to Rdesktop sans DSL desktop, which is just what i wanted, you can still ctrl-alt-backspace to run progs from the command line, but the average win user will have no clue, and only has to press the uparrow and enter to re-connect....

Posted by ahcoraj on Mar. 01 2006,19:55

now i have a question. when you append the rdesktop command to .xinitrc, is there a way to keep x running after you log out of rdesktop?

Posted by doobit on Mar. 01 2006,20:32

I'm curious as to how you are using rdesktop. What are some practical uses for it?

Posted by ahcoraj on Mar. 02 2006,17:44

I have some old slow computers that have dead harddrives but can boot to CD. With Rdesktop, i can access my windows 2003 server i have set up from anywhere i can put one

Posted by doobit on Mar. 02 2006,17:54

Ah, OK. Thanks for the info.

Posted by iscraigh on April 27 2006,20:42

How can I alter the CD to boot right into rdesktop? Could a dsl script be made and burned to the root of the cd that would replace the .xinitrc file? Any ideas?

Thanks

Craig

Posted by kendall14 on April 27 2006,23:12

You could try what I do (need mswin xp), get a cd-rw and burn the dsl image to it but don't finalize it! You can get a free program to do this off the internet ( < http://terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/burncdcc.zip > or if that don't work go to < http://terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html > and download BurnCDCC™). Then just go to your burner with the disc still in it and replace the file by pasting a alterd copy of it and reburning with the xp explorer built in burning software. Hope that makes sence and helps.

Posted by iscraigh on April 28 2006,06:54

Is that file not buried in the compressed image? When I use winiso it appears everything is in the knoppix compressed file.

Craig

Posted by dWLkR on April 28 2006,09:11

Quote (starcannon @ Jan. 26 2006,13:35)

You may use beaver(or text editor of your choice) to edit

Code Sample

home/dsl/.xinitrc

and or

Code Sample

opt/bootlocal.sh

Code Sample

rdesktop -g 800x600 -a 16 -D -u UserName -p P@55w0rd 192.168.1.100

Code Sample

dsl@box:~$rdesktop --help

for a nice list of commands/switches that you can pass with rdesktop.
GL and hope this was of some use.

Rob

awesome - the same plz for VMware-player and u made my day

Posted by iscraigh on April 29 2006,05:26

/home/dsl/.xinitrc

Ok I will ask the dumb question

If I alter this file as above can I back it up and will it the backup be loaded from the multisession cd. Sorry I can't try it right now my burner crapped out and I am waiting for a neww one.

thanks

Craig

Posted by bpanders on Aug. 02 2006,17:45

I just installed DSL and am quite impressed. I've used SUSE 10 but find it too bulky and cumbersome to make a quick install. I'm going to use this for rdesktop and have modified my .xinitrc file to start rdesktop on boot.

Two questions:

1) when DSL boots up and launches rdesktop (to a win2k server) I still end up seeing the taskbar and workspace icons from the DSL desktop on the bottom of the screen, they sit on top of the rdesktop session, covering the windows start menu, quick launch bar, etc. If I Ctrl-Alt-Enter twice, it will go away, but is there a way to make rdesktop sit on top of the DSL desktop without having to do this? If I click on the rdesktop icon on the desktop I don't experience this problem, but I'd like to make it as easy as possible for the end user.

2) Slightly OT: Anyway to configure GRUB to automatically boot linux without waiting 15 seconds or forcing a user to make an option? This is a HD install with only DSL on the disk.

Thanks-
Brian

Posted by ragnar1211 on Aug. 23 2006,17:16

Quote (bpanders @ Aug. 02 2006,13:45)

Try the -f switch instead of saying 800x600, that way dsl goes to fullscreen mode.

You can edit the grub configuration files to reduce the wait time, but I am at work and cannot remember off the top of my head the file to edit.