Can't Remote desktop to Vista from Red Hat Linux ?

Until Vista arrived it was relatively straight forward to connect to microsoft server or PC's from Linux using krdc or rdesktop utilities.

Although XP and Windows 2003 can still be connected from standard yum updated versions of rdesktop, Vista doesnt work.

This is because Microsoft changed the encription and pixel levels in Vista mstsc, so to connect you need to upgrade your linux client

You normaly see the image of the vista remote PC quickly flash and disapear ( in krdc) or using rdesktop 1.4 something like
"rdesktop 192.168.1.5
ERROR: Modules len 0x108
ERROR: send: Connection reset by peer
Error Connection closed"


in Redhat RHEL5 list the current version of rdesktop installed

'yum list installedgrep rdesktop'
rdesktop.i386 1.4.1-6

if your version like above is not 1.5 or better 1.6 then you need to upgrade


go to http://www.rdesktop.org

Download the rdesktop-1.6.0.tar.gz file to /tmp


cd /tmp/rdesktop-1.6.0.

./configure
make
make install


Then run it “/usr/local/bin/rdesktop 192.168.1.5”

Vista console should now show on your Linux/rhel 5 server screen
(as long as all the usual remote settings have been made on vista remote pc, firewall 3389 enabled etc)


Have fun


Chris


IT Support London since 1990