Ben Kevan’s Blog

Novell has taken another step in making xrdp a default package for openSUSE 11.1. This is the reason why the nomad patch has been applied to compiz 0.7.8.

With this we now have the ability to open an RDP session on our linux machine, from a windows machine or another linux machine using rdesktop. This feature will be a main seller in the upcoming SLED 11 release, and openSUSE 11.1 will be the foundation to make sure it’s stable enough for the Enterprise Edition. So with that, I say “Give it a shot” and report your issues at bugzilla.novell.com

To install it run:

sudo zypper in xrdp

You’ll then see the following dependencies:

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
xorg-x11-server-dmx xorg-x11-server-rdp xrdp

(quite possibly more I forget)

To start xrdp run:

sudo /usr/sbin/service xrdp start
or
rcxrdp start (as root)

If you have your firewall turned on be sure you allow the following port:

Tcp 3389

First, I want to start out with some known issues that i’ve seen, and i’ll sift through bugzilla later and post some of the still “known” issues when I get a few.

Known Issues:
rdesktop -g HxW is ignored
doesn’t work with kdm on default installation of openSUSE 11.1. To get it to work add the following repository:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/hfiguiere:/Factory/openSUSE_11.1/
You can add the repository by doing:

sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/hfiguiere:/Factory/openSUSE_11.1/ xrdp

and update all the xrdp related packages by running:

sudo zypper up -t package -r xrdp

Make sure you restart xrdp after doing that by running:

sudo /usr/sbin/service xrdp restart

Once you have that, then you can rdesktop (or rdp) to your linux box see the proof below:

Showing that xrdp is indeed running and I’m opening session via rdesktop

I am then greated with a pretty login screen (I use twm but you can use it with a GNOME or KDE session etc).

Shows successful logon

Now I have my session open, YAY.

I know it seems like this is a low frill thing, but in the enterprise space this is a MAJOR deal as everyone knows how to use rdp, and being able to rdp to linux server / workstation will lower license costs with X windows applications from Windows to Linux / running VNC etc etc.

I haven’t yet tested compiz through xrdp.

You get the idea. I’m a bit tired so the writing above is pretty half ass.