rdesktop and vncviewer??

Forum: DSL-N
Topic: rdesktop and vncviewer??
started by: taiko

Posted by taiko on April 18 2007,15:13

One of the things that I would really like to have in DSL-n is the ability to connect to my other machines via rdesktop (winxp clients) and vnc (other OS's). I seem to remember these being part of the default DSL package and while I understand that DSL-n means "Not DSL" I am surprised these two apps were left out. I've even searched the extension repository for these (the DSL version of vnc will not work with DSL-n). Yesterday I spent a couple of hours trying to build the SciTE application from source within my DSL-n system, but was unable to get it to finish it's compile. I've not completely given up on this but I fear that I will have similar luck if I try to build rdesktop and vncviewer for my machine. Ok, so here's the question part:

1. is there a reliable download repository for Debian Woody compatable source code (in the locations I found yesterday it was unclear as to whether I was really getting Woody versioned source or not).

2. does anyone have prior (successful) experience with building a .dsl extension of rdesktop or vncviewer for DSL-n???

Any help would be appreciated!

Posted by Juanito on April 18 2007,15:29

You could try to build SciTE using a Knoppix 4.0.2 CD to boot from as a ready-made build environment for DSL-N

Posted by taiko on April 18 2007,18:09

Quote (Juanito @ April 18 2007,08:29)

You could try to build SciTE using a Knoppix 4.0.2 CD to boot from as a ready-made build environment for DSL-N

Thanks for the tip juanito. In this case though I'm more interested in getting the correct version of source code. I'm pretty sure that my problems yesterday with building SciTE were related to not having the proper version (scintilla built successfully, but scite had at least one error). Do you know of a good archive for getting Debian Woody application source?

-- EDIT --

I think I just realized what you were telling me... the Knoppix 4.0.2 CD is the correct version of the applications right?

Posted by roberts on April 18 2007,18:49

DSL-N is based on Knoppix 4.0.2

In theory you should be able to "lift" any program from Knoppix 4.0.2 and add it to DSL-N as a UNC type application.

Probably need to ldd the binary to pick up any missing libs.

Since DSL-N only supports unionfs this method should be easy.

In fact, DSL-N was supposed to be a sort of Knoppix by parts (uncs).
Just extract the application that you are interested in and move it into DSL-N as a UNC.

Posted by taiko on April 18 2007,19:58

Quote (roberts @ April 18 2007,11:49)

Just extract the application that you are interested in and move it into DSL-N as a UNC.

Roberts,

I read the documentation on UNC's and understand the concept, but what I don't get is how I would "extract" the application from the Knoppix live CD. Is there any good tutorials, wiki descriptions or anything on this process? Thanks!

Posted by Juanito on April 19 2007,10:18

A "blunt instrument" approach to this - I just tried it successfully with mpg321 - is to copy across your program's executable file from the "un-packed" knoppix image to the equivalent location in DSL.

If you try to run the executable file from a DSL terminal window, it will complain about something being missing so then you note this down and copy the missing file from knoppix to the equivalent location in DSL and start again. Eventually, you will end up with a list of all the required files/symlinks required to run your program in DSL.

Not a clever approach I know, but it works for small/simple applications.

Posted by taiko on April 19 2007,14:49

Ok, thanks Juanito. I'll give that a try for the xtightvncviewer packaged in the knoppix live CD and report back with how it goes.

Posted by taiko on April 19 2007,15:09

Ok, well... that had to be just about the easiest thing I've ever done. I simply copied /usr/bin/xtightvncviewer from the Knoppix live CD to /usr/bin/xtightvncviewer on my DSL-n machine, changed the permissions to 755 and it worked!!! Nothing else to change. Now I have to add that binary to my .filetool.lst so it will persist (hope that works). Thanks again for the help!

Posted by roberts on April 19 2007,15:38

It can be as easy as copying a single binary.

Often I use the find command with the application's name.
This will generally pickup /usr/share type directories, etc.
I redirect the find output to a list and use that as my tar creation list.
Tarball it over to DSL-N.

Next do an ldd on the executeable to see if still missing any libs.
If so, go back to Knoppix and add them to the tar list and re-tarball.

Finally attempt to execute the application on DSL-N in an xterm to view any errors. If so, go back to Knoppix and add again to tar list.

Once I have a complete tar list and correspoinding tarball, I can easily add menu and icon for a .dsl or even better compress into a .unc

Posted by taiko on April 19 2007,16:14

Roberts,

That will probably be my next step as because I want to create an Audacity extension (I got it working using Juanito's copy method after rdesktop and vncviewer because they were so easy). Thanks again for all the help! I'm really loving this distro!