Port of the week: rdesktop

Author: Solène

Date: 20 May 2016

Tags: portoftheweek

NILThis 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**.