Cross-platform UI access

(1)

Cross

-

platform UI access

VNC and rdesktop

David Morgan

Running the other guy

’

s software

Do it on your machine

(2)

Doing it on your machine

Run something that emulates his whole OS

– VMWare

– Lin4Win

Run something that emulates the system

service/API portion of his OS

– wine

– cygwin

Run something that emulates the behavior

of certain particular applications of his

– OpenOffice

Go ahead and turn his machine off!

--Doing it on his machine

Doing it on his machine

Run nothing of his on your machine

– not his OS

– not his API

– not his applications

You just access his machine’s I/O

(3)

Accessing I/O: examples

VNC

rdesktop

graphic

mode

telnet, ssh, etc

--character

mode

win-to-lin

lin-to-win

Accessing his graphical I/O

(4)

VNC

RFB (Remote Frame Buffer) protocol

by AT&T Laboratories, U.K.

(defunct)

server – ports 590 for displays

0-

plus http server – 100 ports lower

– allows a browser as client

rdesktop

RDP (Remote Desktop) Protocol

– by Microsoft

based on ITU T-120 family of protocols

– “Data protocols for multimedia conferencing”

– by International Telecommunications Union

server - port 3389

(5)

Microsoft Terminal Services (TS)

is an RDP implementation

rdesktop, an RDP client, runs against TS

TS also, more recently, dubbed “Remote

Desktop Connection”

[root@EMACH1 root]# su david -c vncserver New 'X' desktop is EMACH1:1

Starting applications specified in /home/david/.vnc/xstartup Log file is /home/david/.vnc/EMACH1:1.log

[root@EMACH1 root]# su nitsa -c vncserver New 'X' desktop is EMACH1:2

Starting applications specified in /home/nitsa/.vnc/xstartup Log file is /home/nitsa/.vnc/EMACH1:2.log

[root@EMACH1 root]# ps -ef | grep Xvnc

david 3047 1 0 09:23 tty1 00:00:00 Xvnc :1 -desktop X –httpd /usr/share/vnc/classes -auth /home/david/.Xauthority -geometry 1024x768 -depth 8 -rfbwait 120000 -rfbauth /home/david/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5901 -fp unix/:7100 nitsa 3061 1 1 09:24 tty1 00:00:00 Xvnc :2 -desktop X –httpd /usr/share/vnc/classes -auth /home/nitsa/.Xauthority -geometry 1024x768 -depth 8 -rfbwait 120000 -rfbauth /home/nitsa/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5902 -fp unix/:7100 root 3118 1488 0 09:24 tty1 00:00:00 grep Xvnc

Setting up 2 VNC servers

run a server instance as user david

and another as user nitsa

displays

(6)

Setting up 2 VNC servers

One server

– user david

– on X display 1

– via vnc on port 5901 or http on port 5801

– runs david’s “xstartup”s window manager etc

the other server

– user nitsa

– on X display 2

– via vnc on port 5902 or http on port 5802

– runs nitsa’s “xstartup”s window manager etc

lin

desktop from win desktop

(via

vnc

)

ran VNC viewer against

192.168.3.7:2 (display 2)

(7)

lin

desktop from win desktop

(via http)

ran Internet Explorer against

ports 5801(display 1)

and 5802 (display 2)

lin

desktop from win desktop

(via http)

(Note: / home/david/.vnc/xstartup changed to call gnome instead of twm, relative to earlier slied)

(8)

[root@EMACH1 root]# su david -c vncserver New 'X' desktop is EMACH1:1

[root@EMACH1 root]#

[root@EMACH1 root]# tail -f /home/david/.vnc/EMACH1\:1.log 28/10/03 20:08:53 httpd: get '' for 192.168.3.3

28/10/03 20:08:53 httpd: defaulting to 'index.vnc'

28/10/03 20:09:00 httpd: get 'vncviewer.jar' for 192.168.3.3 28/10/03 20:09:14 Got connection from client 192.168.3.3 28/10/03 20:09:14 Protocol version 3.3

28/10/03 20:09:14 Using tight encoding for client 192.168.3.3

28/10/03 20:09:14 Enabling X-style cursor updates for client 192.168.3.3 28/10/03 20:09:14 Enabling LastRect protocol extension for client 192.168.3.3 28/10/03 20:09:14 Pixel format for client 192.168.3.3:

28/10/03 20:09:14 8 bpp, depth 8

28/10/03 20:09:14 true colour: max r 7 g 7 b 3, shift r 0 g 3 b 6 28/10/03 20:09:14 no translation needed

Finger on the server pulse

…

there’s a log file

watch dynamically

Stopping server

[david@EMACH1 .vnc]$ vncserver New 'X' desktop is EMACH1:1

[david@EMACH1 .vnc]$ ps -ef | grep Xvnc | grep -v grep

david 2777 1 0 22:04 pts/0 00:00:00 Xvnc :1 -desktop X –httpd /usr/share/vnc/classes -auth /root/.Xauthority -geometry 1024x768 -depth 8 –rfbwait 120000 -rfbauth /home/david/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5901 -fp unix/:7100 [david@EMACH1 .vnc]$

[david@EMACH1 .vnc]$ vncserver -kill :1 Killing Xvnc process ID 2777

[david@EMACH1 .vnc]$

[david@EMACH1 .vnc]$ ps -ef | grep Xvnc | grep -v grep [david@EMACH1 .vnc]$

born as display :1

(9)

win desktop from

win desktop from lin

lin

desktop

(via

rdesktop

)

win desktop from

(10)

X client/server model, VNC and

X Client/application

X Server /

service

-OR-VNC vis

VNC vis

-

à

-

vis X

X Client/application

X Server /

service

X11 protocol X11 protocol port 6000 port 6000 VNC protocol VNC protocol port 5900 port 5900

(11)

Why VNC over X?

widely cross-platform

– clients and servers for UNIX, Win, Mac,

mainframes, handhelds

lightweight (low bandwidth)

persistent desktops

– close viewer

– relaunch later, to previous desktop unaltered

“

(12)

capturing screen images

xwd

– “xwd –root –out screenimage.xwd”

ImageMagick

– “display screenimage.xwd”

– when image appears left click, file/save/format

to convert to another format (jpg, gif, etc)

see man xwd, man ImageMagick

VNC sources

http://www.tightvnc.com

http://www.realvnc.com/

http://networking.earthweb.com/netos/print.php/1470341

http://www.linux-mag.com/2003-03/guru_01.html

/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-*/fb/framebuffer.txt

(13)

rdesktop

sources

http://www.rdesktop.org/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinf

o/howitworks/terminal/rdpfandp.asp

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/

THE END

(14)

rdesktop 192.168.3.3

rdesktop –F 192.168.3.3

– how to escape fullscreen?

vncviewer 192.168.3.3

– F8 to toggle fullscreen

into win from