RDesktop via Cydia

[tsunami78]

Hello all,

I recently installed Cydia, and have been impressed by the number of applications available. One of the first ones I attempted to install was RDesktop, a RDP client used for administering Windows machines. For those who don't know, RDP is a protocol used by Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008 terminal services/Remote Desktop. Think VNC a la Microsoft. I manage numerous Windows machines, and would love to have a RDP client on my iPhone as it would allow me to do a lot of management tasks.

After installing RDesktop, I noticed that there was no icon added for the application. When I attempt to call the RDesktop application from the command line, I get the error "ERROR: Failed to open display: X.X.X.X" Where the Xes == the ip address of my server. Has anyone had success getting RDesktop working on their iPhone? If so, I'd love a how-to.

Cheers,
Jason

[tomservo291]

I've installed it as well, and I've seen that if you just run the rdesktop command (no arguments) from a terminal, that it cant locate libcrypto 0.9.8.

I've run rdesktop on a bunch of different platforms, and it does require that it is run from an X11 environment. Is our terminal an xterm? If not, I haven't seen any apps out there that claim to be...

If it is, how can I fulfill this dependency? I don't see any crypto libs in Cydia

[tsunami78]

**Bump**

Anyone? ... Anyone?

Bueller? ... Bueller?

This would make my iphone so much more useful If anyone has gotten it working, PLEASE respond.

[yek401]

I can't find any info about the x server.. Maybe once we can get xeyes working, we can talk about rdesktop.

So I guess there isn't a native X server?
see: http://wickedpsyched.com/iphone/X11/
Looks like while you can run rdesktop natively on the iPhone, you're still gonna need to send the display somewhere else. Oh well.

[Interloper]

Maybe if we make a bluetooth mouse to work on the iphone for remoteDesktop we'd never have to go to work again

Edit: Will consider donating to all who respond to this thread

[vinividiiphone]

Yup, I've done this, and it's a hoot :) Here's how.

The iPhone doesn't have a way to display the x-applications (yet), but it can run them, and you can view/use them on another computer. I'm using a Mac as the computer that displays the apps in this example.


On the Mac:

Open up an xterm, then type:

sudo xhost +iphonenamehere

This adds the iphone to the white list, and allows it to connect to your Mac display.

ssh into your iphone with the -Y switch

i.e. ssh -Y root@youriphonenamehere

default password is alpine

On the iPhone: (this is in the SSH session from the Mac)

export DISPLAY=192.168.1.11:0.0 (change IP address to whatever yours happens to be)

then run your x-apps, i.e.

rdesktop -a 16 -z -r disk:floppy=/var/root/ ipaddressorcomputername:port

xeyes -display 192.168.1.11:0.0

crazy stuff :)

[georgc]

How would i go about doing this on a PC? Also moca VNC works great but the screen refresh is a slow. was there anyothre remote desktop apps that 1.1.4 had that could be ported to 2.0?

[vinividiiphone]

the short answer to that is with an x-server on your pc, and (mostly) the method described above.

i can confirm that it works with Cygwin/X. There are other X-Servers to choose from, ymmv.

i found the major pita to be the display authentication. i haven't discovered how to add the iphone to the xhost list under cygwin (anyone?.) the docs say xhost +, i've also tried:

xhost +iphonenameoripaddress and xhost iphonenameoripaddress

to no avail.

I finally used the undocumented (apparently) -ac switch when starting the X-server, i.e. Xwin -ac to circumvent authentication. Not my preference, but it works.

I'll try to flesh this out as people have questions.

[bluelang]

Originally Posted by vinividiiphone

the short answer to that is with an x-server on your pc, and (mostly) the method described above.

i can confirm that it works with Cygwin/X. There are other X-Servers to choose from, ymmv.

i found the major pita to be the display authentication. i haven't discovered how to add the iphone to the xhost list under cygwin (anyone?.) the docs say xhost +, i've also tried:

xhost +iphonenameoripaddress and xhost iphonenameoripaddress

to no avail.

I finally used the undocumented (apparently) -ac switch when starting the X-server, i.e. Xwin -ac to circumvent authentication. Not my preference, but it works.

I'll try to flesh this out as people have questions.

you have to start X first, then xhost + works. so,

startx

xhost +
ssh iPhone
export DISPLAY=192.168.1.yourIP:0
xeyes

[georgc]

Now I know that rdesktop cannot render A pc's desktop. Would this be possable in the future?

[vinividiiphone]

do you mean, on the iphone itself? yeah, it's possible that someone will write/port the code to do so.

for now we have VNC.

Originally Posted by georgc

Now I know that rdesktop cannot render A pc's desktop. Would this be possable in the future?

[canook2008]

Just a friendly comment from an old dog: Xwindows terminology actually is the reverse of what you migh be used to:

Xserver is the terminal - it serves graphical requests (and other) from
Xclient, which is the computer (Mac, PC, UNIX) on which the program is running and which wants the Xsever service the input/output requests