Title: Port of the week: rdesktop | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 20 May 2016 | |
Tags: portoftheweek | |
Description: | |
This week we will have a quick look at the tool **rdesktop**. Rdesktop | |
is a RDP client (RDP stands for Remote Desktop Protocol) which is used | |
to share your desktop with another machine. RDP is a Microsoft thing | |
and it's most used on Windows. | |
I am personally using it because sometimes I need to use Microsoft | |
Word/Excel or Windows only software and I have a dedidated virtual | |
machine for this. So I use **rdesktop** to connect in fullscreen to | |
the virtual machine and I can work on Windows. The RDP protocol is | |
very efficient, on LAN network there is no lag. I appreciate much more | |
using the VM with RDP than VNC. | |
You can also have RDP servers within virtual machines. VirtualBox let | |
you have (with an additional package to add on the host) RDP server | |
for a VM. Maybe VmWare provides RDP servers too. I know that Xen and | |
KVM can give access through VNC or Spice but no RDP. | |
For its usage, if you want to connect to a RDP server whose IP address | |
is 192.168.1.100 in fullscreen with max quality, type: | |
$ rdesktop -f -x 0x80 192.168.1.100 | |
The **`-x 0x80`** bit is needed to set the quality at maximum. If the | |
machine needs username and password you can add **`-u my_user -p | |
my_plaintext_pass`** to login automatically. I have an alias in my zsh | |
shell, I just type "windows" and I get logged in in fullscreen to the | |
windows machine. | |
**To exit fullscreen** type ctrl+alt+return to switch to windowed mode | |
and again to go in fullscreen mode. I wasn't able to remember the | |
keyboard shortcut the first times and was stuck in Windows ! ;-) | |
In the OpenBSD ports tree, check **x11/rdesktop**. | |